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Published on 08/11/1999 All articles from this issue

Structure reaction beyond child's play

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

In one part of town, concern over a play structure has moved way beyond child's play. Some wonder when a treehouse is too big. Others shudder at the thought of building permits for children's forts. City officials shake their heads.

Here's a tale of a family project vs. another's privacy. The Town Crier respected the requests of those involved not to use their names.

The family, which includes two little girls, chose their Los Altos home a year ago for its backyard tree that was big enough for a treehouse.

They hired an arborist, an architect and an engineer to make sure the tree, with its enormous spreading branches, could support the treehouse the dad had dreamed of building.

"We love that tree," the mom said. "We'd never hurt it intentionally."

Construction began Memorial Day weekend. The treehouse took shape. Now scalloped wooden trim, designed on graph paper by mom and hand cut with a jig saw by dad, edges the roof line. Inside, a ladder leads to a loft that looks out a child-sized dormer window into the family's back yard, but not into anyone else's yard.

What began as a treehouse, "now looks like an accessory structure," said one of the neighbors who is downhill from the treehouse.

She called city hall to complain. One weekend during construction, when the treehouse was just a platform, the folks building the treehouse "waved to me when I was in my bedroom in my nightie. It's an egregious invasion of privacy."

She said she has not talked to the treehouse neighbors about her concerns. But she has written city hall.

Los Altos does not regulate play structures. The state building code exempts them up to 120-square-feet of floor structure, said Larry Tong, director of planning for the city of Los Altos. "But Los Altos code exempts all play structures, no matter what the size," he said.

You can't see the treehouse from the street, not from the street of the neighbors who feels her privacy is invaded, nor from the treehouse owners' street.

Now that the treehouse is framed and enclosed, the only thing the neighbors can see from their back yard is a glimpse of wooden wall, through the tree branches, but no windows.

From the treehouse side, "We can't see the neighbor's house. We even had the tree trimmed and left all the lower branches," said the treehouse mom, because they are trying to be sensitive to neighbors' privacy.

Complaints have city officials scratching their heads about what to do.

Maybe there "should be some sort of approval when all of a sudden there's a change in privacy," said King Lear, a member of the city council.

But "people should be able to put up a swing set without a bureaucracy," Lear said. "The last thing we want is a huge bureaucracy regarding play structures. But where do you draw the line?"

The neighbor isn't happy. "The city has a 1950s idea about play structures," she said. "That's why the city has parks. We don't all have to re-create Great America in our back yards for our children," she said.

The treehouse owners are sad. They wish the neighbor had come to them before sending letters to the city.

"This is a labor of love," the mom said. They won't be putting in windows, but they do have a Dutch door they've recycled and cut down.

"I can't wait to put it in," she said.