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The old adage says fences make good neighbors, but Aurora’s plan to fortify its image by building brick walls around some neighborhoods could cause divisions between people who do and don’t want the new boundaries built.
The Neighborhood Fence Replacement Program, unveiled October 2, lets Aurora residents pay the city to replace the back panels of wooden backyard fences with “attractive, durable masonry fences” — the result being continuous brick walls running around the perimeters of neighborhoods, particularly those bordered by busy streets.
Each neighborhood that wants the walls will get its own Special Improvement District, and the city will hire builders to put up the fences in those districts and then tack the costs onto the homeowners’ property-tax bills, spreading the fees over ten years. Residents will also have to pay an annual maintenance fee. Approval is needed from only two-thirds of the homeowners in each neighborhood, according to the plan, so even the people who don’t want a fence will have to pay.
It will cost about $1 million to build one mile of fencing, says Aurora councilman Ed Tauer, who designed the program. Although the cost will be spread out over however many homes are in the neighborhood, the people who benefit most — namely, those who live on the neighborhood’s edges where the walls will actually be built — will have to pay more than those in the interior of the neighborhood. Before each six-foot-high masonry fence is built, an economic analyst will determine who will pay what based on the benefits they will receive. (The city shies away from calling the structures “brick walls.” As Tauer notes, “It’s semantics, but it’s to convey an intent. The intent here is not to wall off neighborhoods — it’s to build fences that require less maintenance.”)
The problem is that the existing but aging wooden structures just don’t look very nice, say city officials who came up with the plan after Aurora residents repeatedly asked them about sprucing up the fences. Unsightly horrors include the all-too-common image of a “new section of fencing next to an old section,” further complicated by the “myriad of designs” that can be found in a single neighborhood, according to a city press release. “They’ve kind of turned into a patchwork quilt,” adds Margee Cannon, Aurora’s neighborhood liaison coordinator.
Although the point of the project is to give the fences a uniform look, four alluring design choices will be offered, allowing each neighborhood — there are 279 neighborhood associations in Aurora — to forge “a new identity,” according to the city. There’s “The Classic,” a basic brick wall; “The Great Wall,” made of “king-size” bricks for those who believe bigger is better; “The Southwestern,” a daring combination of split-faced block with stucco; and “The Country Club,” a brick wall with a block base. Aurora’s public-works division consulted with designers to come up with the alternatives.
Aside from the largely aesthetic aim of the project, Cannon says there are other benefits to brick walls. For instance, she cites the “broken-window theory,” which suggests that houses or neighborhoods that look run down attract crime. Often, she says, unattractive wooden fences give passersby the impression that the people who live behind them don’t care much about their property, whereas nicer neighborhood borders could ward off the criminal element. In addition, the walls could reduce traffic noise, cut back on maintenance costs and raise property values. “The improvement of the look of the perimeter fences goes deep to the heart of the look of the neighborhood,” she says.
Aurora isn’t the first city to see the advantages of bricking in its neighborhoods. Greenwood Village has a similar program, although the main purpose of its walls (called “sound attenuation structures”) is to block out traffic noise. For a neighborhood to qualify, sound measurements have to show that the area has a noise problem that could be alleviated by a new structure, says Jim Sanderson, the city’s director of public works.
This isn’t the first time Aurora residents have paid to build walls, either. About ten years ago, using basically the same process outlined in the city’s new plan, the Eastridge neighborhood arranged with the city to knock down fences and put up walls along Iliff and Yale avenues, the two major thoroughfares that enclose the area.
Eastridge resident Lorraine Rup says while she’s been very happy with the walls and with the way Aurora handled the building process, there have been a few glitches. Before she could refinance her home, she had to pay off the $850 wall fee, which her mortgage lender regarded as a lien against the property. Also, Rup says, homeowners are responsible for the strip of land between the wall and the street, and in order to kill weeds or shovel snow there, they must walk around the mile-long barriers and then work at the edges of major thoroughfares. (To avoid this, the Eastridge Civic Association collects dues to pay for maintenance.) In spite of these problems, however, Rup says only a handful of her neighbors initially opposed the walls and that most are pleased with the result.
The city’s Cannon has no doubt that some people will take issue with Aurora’s new plan. Although she emphasizes that the program is completely voluntary and that neighborhood associations have to “sell it to themselves” by getting enough people to sign petitions approving the wall-building, it’s possible that as much as a third of a neighborhood’s residents could oppose the wall but end up paying for it anyway.
That’s no different than a vote, where some people get their way and others don’t, says councilman Tauer, who adds that other cities have contacted Aurora because they’re interested in similar initiatives.
But at a packed question-and-answer session on October 9, a few Aurora homeowners weren’t so thrilled with Tauer’s idea.
Art Schaecher, for one, doesn’t want a “masonry fence” going up around his home at the corner of Quincy Avenue and Smoky Hill Road in the Pheasant Run neighborhood. “Who is going to benefit by this fence looking good?” he demanded during the meeting. “Everyone driving down the street? Then they should be paying for it, too. Everyone in the city’s going to benefit from it.”
Schaecher said he moves his motor home in and out of his backyard through a gate in his wooden fence, and if a wall goes up where the fence is now, he’ll lose access to the backyard.
Tauer responded to Schaecher’s concerns with the city’s standard reply: The program’s not for everyone, and it’s voluntary. But after the meeting, Schaecher said he’s worried that his neighbors will want to build the wall and that they’ll get their way. “I’m going to go to every door in the neighborhood and beg them not to go along with it,” he said.
Plus, he added, “I don’t like the idea of the city charging me to build a fence and maintain this fence. I want to retire next year. I don’t need this extra tax.”
On the other side of the fence is Brad Pierce, president of Aurora’s CentrePointe Neighborhood Association, who says the rise in property values will outweigh the building costs. But he isn’t sure if everyone in his community of 1,100 homes will see it that way. “It’s going to be dependent on how well we pitch it to the residents.”
