Chris d Craiker ALA/NCARB
When Santa’s House Burndown, The County Asked him to move in with the Reindeer
That July Sunday morning, the phone rang. Kris Kringle’s voice was instantly recognizable, “Hey Chris, my favorite Architect! You know that log cabin you restored for me up north of Calistoga? Well, while under construction, it burned down, went up in smoke.” He added, “Probably an electrical fire while installing the lights, but I’ll let the electricians and Insurance companies figure it out.” He added, “Thank goodness nobody was injured, but it’s a total ruin, a chard wreck“, he noted with resolve.
Mr. K’s voice was amazingly upbeat, since he bought this existing old log cabin for him and the Missus rather than build a new house for himself in Southern Napa where the Napa Airport Authority was giving him a rough time on his periodic midnight reindeer flights. The site had a vineyard and a reindeer barn with a guest cottage above. It took a year to get the renovation building permit, but in Spring ’24 the remodeling was in full swing. Now it was in complete ruins.
Mr. K was relentless in his desire to have his summer quarters in Napa. After all, the Christmas mania has been extended from November to Halloween and soon the frenzy will be extended to September 3, Labor Day. Get ready for Christmas decorations in September!
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and him had made a deal to take over a lot of his routes, thus taking a lot of stress off Mr. K’s 7 billion deliveries in one night. Now, Amazon delivers all the packages over multiple weeks and the only stipulation with Mr. K is that he checks to make sure all recipients are either naughty or nice. Now he only has four reindeers for the constant seasonal public appearances and to shout out, “Ho!Ho!Ho!“
Of course, Mr. K was not about to grieve over the loss without thinking about its replacement. So, we immediately started designing his new summer home in the style and comfort he desired. But there was one little thing we had to take care of: demolition and removal of the charred ruins.
A building permit was requested by our qualified demo contractor, a simple but essential task to clean up the waste before pending rains washed the debris into the adjacent creeks. The Napa County response was immediate: the Environmental departments insisted that before we could remove the ruined waste, we must destroy the existing septic tanks or make the reindeer barn into the primary residence.
This escaped all logic. Both the log cabin and the reindeer barn had separate septic systems and to destroy the log cabin’s tanks because it was disconnected was a mystery. If rain came, the streams would be filled with debris and dangerous waste.
So, I applied to the county asking for a remedy. The response was to ask for a new building permit application for a new house or convert the 1000 square foot reindeer barn and cottage into the primary house. How hard is that?
So… The County Planning and Environmental Departments wanted Santa, whose house burned down, to move into the reindeer barn?
Seasonal rains that could flush the debris into the adjacent creek meant nothing to the County Environmental Department. The building department was fine with the permit but Planning insisted the reindeer cottage include a 150 square-foot kitchen, larger than my own home. So, making a reindeer barn with the guest cottage above into the primary residence was essential to allowing us to remove a burned down structure, with potential waste flowing with the first rain. Go figure.
Somehow the County Planning Department interpreted this requirement from some obscure code section. However, they did give us the option to submit for a permit for a new house on the site. That was unrealistic, taking months for all the consultant and design work. Bureaucracy in action. Napa County has never found a code they couldn’t re-interpret to make life more difficult. Safety and common-sense mean little.
To move things along, we submitted plans for conversion of the barn/ Guest cottage into the temporary main house. The permit is still pending after 10 weeks back and forth. The good news for Mr. K is the building Department is ready to issue permits to get this going……as long as the other departments go along. Crickets…..
The reindeer are a little upset. They wanted the barn all to themselves, especially after they got rid of Rudolph who went to Hallmark Studios to make Christmas movies. What a show-off!
Mr. K hasn’t decided if he will rebuild his summer home in Napa County or in another Wine County. Interestingly, Alaska already has 12 wineries and as the climate warms up, maybe Alaska will be the next Napa Valley. Afterall, he’s in for the long haul.
Chris d Craiker AIA/NCARB chris@craiker.com for more information
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