Tear down or move: Court says McKennan Park monster house must go

A circuit court judge has given a McKennan Park couple 30 days to remove their home, capping a three-year legal battle between its owners and neighbors.

Judge John Pekas’ order requires Josh and Sarah Sapienza to demolish or move the home by June 16. If they fail to do so, the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office will be ordered to demolish the home.

After listening to brief arguments made by Steve Johnson, the lawyer for neighbors Pierce and Barbara McDowell, and Sapienza attorney Dick Travis, Pekas said he’d given the parties deference to resolve issues with the home, which he previously ruled was not compliant with building standards for national historic districts.

“We are now at the positon where we have to take action,” Pekas said.

Travis had asked for more time, saying the Sapienzas had submitted new plans to the Sioux Falls Board of Historic Preservation for the board’s June meeting.

“To deny the Sapienzas that right and opportunity does create an undue hardship and significant burden to them if they are denied that right,” Travis said.

But Johnson said his clients had been living with the home for more than three years.

“There’s a time when this has to end. We think it’s now,” he said.

The decision comes one week after the Sioux Falls Board of Historic Preservation denied an application from the Sapienzas to redesign the home’s roof line by removing its gables and lowering its height by 8.5 feet. That would have made the home compliant with one of 11 standards for new construction in designation national historic districts.

But Johnson argued that the home failed to meet many of the other standards, including whether the home’s size and massing were consistent with adjacent homes in the neighborhood.

The board agreed with Johnson, finding the home had an adverse effect on the McKennan Park Historic District.

Travis noted that the Sapienzas had submitted new plans with the board, which meets again in June. He asked Pekas for time until the board could consider those plans, saying it was an inequitable burden on the Sapienzas not to give them more time.

But Johnson argued the Sapienzas were attempting to retry the case.

"That's really what's going on," he said.

After the ruling, Travis told Pekas that a contractor in the courtroom had indicated that it would take longer than 30 days to move the home. Pekas urged the contractor to contact Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead to arrange a timeframe for removing the home.

The Sapienzas started construction on the home in 2014 after scrapping the existing structure. The couple gained approval from the Board of Historic Preservation, but the structure that the board approved was not what was ultimately built, the McDowells argued.

The Sapienzas also complied with city building codes, which included setback distances. But they did not comply with stricter federal and state standards that regulate construction in historic districts.

The McDowells filed suit in 2015 after learning that the new home was so close that they were told by a Sioux Falls fire inspector they could no longer use a wood-burning fireplace. In 2017, Pekas ruled in favor of the McDowells. Most of that ruling was affirmed earlier this year by the South Dakota Supreme Court.