David Andreatta

@david_andreatta

David and Tina Mattia want to build their dream home in the village of Pittsford — a classic cottage of white clapboard siding and stone. They have the land. They have the design. They have the money.

What they don't have are a porch railing and shed dormers that suit the taste of the village's notoriously hidebound Architectural and Preservation Review Board.

The board last month rejected their application to begin construction and suggested the Mattias take their dream home back to the drawing board.

But after 20 months of wrangling with the board and spending tens of thousands of dollars to appease its members, the Mattias instead took the board to court.

The couple has sued, and next month will try to persuade a state judge to order the board to give them the green light to build.

"I go before other design review boards, planning boards, preservation boards very regularly, and this is by far the most crazy thing I've ever experienced," said Jon Schick, the Mattias' architect and a longtime member of the Rochester Preservation Board.

"It's been a major soap opera," he said.

Like any soap opera, the storylines to this one run concurrently, intersecting at times, with no end in sight. Board meetings always adjourn with the promise of more drama on the horizon.

It is this sort of cyclical narrative that has come to define the village's approach to any development that rankles the sensibilities of the stewards of Pittsford's self-proclaimed distinctive architectural charm.

The drama began in August 2015, when the Mattias asked the Architectural and Preservation Review Board for permission to demolish a brick house they had bought at 44 Sutherland St. and to replace it with their dream home.

The house was built in 1949 on a little less than an acre and sits behind a stone wall and a tangle of old trees. It sounds charming, but it's an odd-looking thing thanks to a two-car garage that was added in 1975 and became its most prominent feature.

According to their application, the Mattias had always intended to tear down the garage and renovate the original house. But they decided they wanted to demolish the whole thing when an inspection determined the place was infested with mold and uninhabitable.

In most places, razing a house and replacing it with a new one wouldn't be a problem. But this is the village of Pittsford, where virtually every structure has been designated historic and is subject to rigid building guidelines as interpreted by the five-member board.

You don't just demolish houses in Pittsford, even moldy ones with no significant social, cultural or political history that were built after World War II and got a facelift during the Disco Era.

Not only that, some board members refused to believe the house was unlivable. They accused the couple of exacerbating the mold condition by spraying the house with water. The Mattias deny doing any such thing.

One board member who expressed sympathy for the Mattias was subsequently removed from the board.

The Mattias would spend 16 months in board meetings and tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees and the services of a half-dozen experts, including the village's own mold assessor, to convince the board that the house had to go.

In December 2016, the board reluctantly authorized the demolition on the condition that it approve the plans for the replacement dream home. The Mattias have been trying to get approval ever since.

Board members have taken no issue with the size of the dream home, which would run roughly the same 3,400 square feet as the house to be razed.

But the porch railing and shed dormers? They simply won't do in the eyes of the board. No way. Uh-uh.

As board chairwoman Maria Huot explained last month, the existing house is an example of neo-Tudor architecture, and the railing and dormers aren't consistent with that style.

Schick, the Mattias' architect, countered that he believed the existing house was a Cape Cod.

The board shot back that Cape Cods can have Tudor characteristics, and that it's crucial to the integrity of the entire village that the characteristics of a building to be torn down be preserved in its replacement.

"Now, I don't want you to get concerned because like we're now trying to change the whole house," Huot explained. "That's not the intention."

"There are many elements that are working now," she said. "There are just things that need to be tweaked."

The Mattias are done tweaking.

They have the land. They have the design. They have the money.

With any luck, they'll have justice, too.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.