Condos are coming, but Everett woman won’t budge

Published 11:05 pm Thursday, April 3, 2008

EVERETT — Aileen Langhans didn’t hang the sign on her tiny white house, but she hasn’t taken it down, either.

It reads: “10th Commandment Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s House.”

It’s a dig at Mike Westford, who along with his family owns nearly a dozen houses around Langhans’ home between Everett’s downtown and the waterfront.

Westford wants to tear down his rental houses and build two eight-story condominiums. He’s filed plans with the city. One plan includes building on her property. Another would put one of the condo buildings towering over her house.

He’s hoping she will sell her house to him. If she refuses, Westford said he is prepared to construct around her one- bedroom home.

“She’s got property rights, but so do I,” Westford said.

Langhans, a 55-year-old ultrasound technician, says she worries that Westford is trying to take advantage of her.

“He wheels and deals all the time,” she said. “This is the only house I’ve ever owned, and I don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

While raising his children in the neighborhood, Westford said, he spent nearly two decades buying the block of former millworker houses, cutting deals with homeowners and sometimes outbidding competing buyers.

It’s not the first neighborhood controversy for Westford.

He displays the Ten Commandments on his rental homes along with pictures of babies with anti-abortion messages. He said he traces most of society’s ills to violations of biblical law.

He rents his properties to registered sex offenders who also have drug or alcohol problems in their past. Westford, a devout Roman Catholic, said he was asked a decade ago by the Department of Corrections to provide housing for people who have paid their debt to society.

Westford said he keeps a close eye on his tenants and has zero tolerance for drug or alcohol use.

Langhans and other neighbors say living next to registered sex offenders is unsettling. They say it lowers their property values.

Langhans found out about Westford’s condo plans in January when she was recovering from gall bladder surgery. She saw surveyors lugging equipment into her back yard, asked what they were doing and was told they were surveying for Westford.

Langhans is chairwoman of the Bayside Neighborhood Association and also is active with Historic Everett, a nonprofit historic preservation group.

She started organizing her neighbors against the condo project. She and her supporters say Westford’s proposed concrete-and-steel buildings are boxy and out of scale with the neighborhood, one of Everett’s oldest, which has a mix of single family homes and condo and apartment buildings. Most multifamily buildings are three or fewer stories.

Despite a slumping national housing market, a wave of redevelopment continues to wash over downtown Everett and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Just a two blocks away, crews have demolished the former Elks Lodge, where a 200-unit multifamily complex is planned. Along the Grand Avenue bluff, a handful of property owners have razed dilapidated houses and replaced them with bay-view condos.

Westford is pushing forward to gain approval for his condo plans, because the city could soon limit the height of buildings in this part of Everett. The current height limit is 80 feet; the city is considering limiting it to 65 feet. The planning commission approved the change, and the City Council is expected to take up the issue next month.

Valerie Steel, Langhans’ real estate agent, said the condos are too tall for the neighborhood.

“Personally I think 45 feet is reasonable,” she said.

Westford said that Langhans is inaccurately portraying herself as a victim. He said he will pay her a fair price for her home but that she refuses to return calls from his attorney.

Langhans has knocked on doors and sent e-mails to residents in her neighborhood trying to rally opposition to the proposal.

Her messages warn residents that the proposal is out of scale with the existing neighborhood and that it would eliminate views.

“Our entire neighborhood must unite in mutual support in order to prevent this intrusion,” she wrote in an e-mail to members of the neighborhood association.

Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.