82-year-old man and his 124-year-old house lose battle with St. Louis Park

Carl Eide thought he'd spend his re­main­ing years in the house he's lived in for the past four de­cades. In­stead, at 82, he finds his home, his life and his fi­nan­ces in cha­os.

Eide has been evict­ed from his 1890 home, one of the old­est build­ings in St. Louis Park. The crum­bling house on busy Minnetonka Bou­le­vard perches awk­ward­ly above a 5-foot-deep trench around its pe­rim­e­ter, the leg­acy of a failed ren­o­va­tion that caused more prob­lems than it solved.

And af­ter a two-year court bat­tle, Eide's home is sched­uled to be de­mol­ished at the end of Jan­u­ar­y — on his 83rd birth­day.

"The whole thing is just a rot­ten set of cir­cum­stances," Eide said.

With his mus­cu­lar frame, leath­er jack­et and gray pony­tail, Eide looks every inch the bik­er he's been his whole life. He sold and re­paired mo­tor­cy­cles for de­cades and has been ac­tive in rac­ing and clas­sic bike as­so­ci­a­tions. The liv­ing room in his house is neat­ly lined with book­shelves hold­ing a trove of mo­tor­cy­cle and auto shop manu­als and rac­ing pub­li­ca­tions.

But his main prob­lems are out­side the house. It all be­gan a cou­ple of years ago, when the front porch start­ed to sag away from the build­ing.

"That start­ed ev­er­y­thing, more or less," Eide said.

Nev­er quite en­ough

The sto­ry of Eide's house, doc­ument­ed in two years' worth of court fil­ings, tells of an ear­nest ef­fort on both sides to deal with an an­cient home that was ad­mit­ted­ly fall­ing into dis­re­pair.

Time and a­gain, city in­spec­tors would ord­er Eide to make fix­es. Time and a­gain, he would make them — but nev­er quite to the point of cor­rect­ing all the is­sues. Time and a­gain, the city would give him an­oth­er chance.

He hired a con­trac­tor to fix the sag­ging porch, but the con­trac­tor failed to get a per­mit and the city shut down the work. That led to in­creased scru­ti­ny of the prop­er­ty and de­mands for ad­di­tion­al re­pairs. The home's brick sid­ing — not a struc­tur­al el­e­ment, but a ve­neer over the wood un­der­neath — was cracked and need­ed to be re­in­forced.

Eide hired a ma­son to shore up the brick­work. That meant dig­ging a trench to in­stall sup­port foot­ings. When the trench was dug, some of the brick­work ve­neer broke away, re­veal­ing areas of rot­ted wood and de­fi­cien­cies in the home's foun­da­tion. The work was shut down a­gain, and Eide en­tered a long legal lim­bo.

City says it's been pa­tient

The re­pairs and the law­yers have stretched Eide's fi­nan­ces to the lim­it. Even be­fore his bat­tle with the city, he had spent a con­sid­er­a­ble a­mount re­pair­ing the house, he said.

About seven years ago, he got a re­verse mort­gage. But the bank re­quired some sig­nifi­cant reno­va­tions be­fore it would sign off on the deal. At that time, Eide said, he up­grad­ed the plumb­ing and e­lec­tri­cal, had the house paint­ed and put on a new roof. Between the initial round of repairs and the more recent renovation, the balance he owes to the bank has ballooned from $66,000 to $177,000.

"I'm an old Nor­we­gian, con­cerned about my mon­ey," he said.

There's a "For Sale" sign in front of the house, but at this point it can be sold only as a teardown. The prop­er­ty — more than two full city lots near one of St. Louis Park's bus­iest inter­sec­tions — is list­ed at $215,000.

City of­fi­cials say they've been more than pa­tient with Eide.

"It's un­for­tu­nate when any house de­te­rio­rates to the point that we have to get in­volved," said Brian Hoff­man, di­rec­tor of in­spec­tions for St. Louis Park. "But it's pret­ty hard not to no­tice the front porch fall­ing off." Hoff­man said Eide has had am­ple time to eith­er sell or re­pair the house.

"He had about a year to do that," Hoff­man said. "Through this pe­riod, in the legal proc­ess, the at­tor­neys have talked and tried to come up with some so­lu­tions. He could have sold it or re­paired it. When it gets to the point that it be­comes a public haz­ard, some­thing has to be done.

"There's noth­ing wrong with a 200-year-old house," Hoff­man said. "It's just a mat­ter of how it's built and how it's main­tained."

'It's going to be rough'

Eide in­sists that, giv­en more time, he could have com­pleted all the ne­ces­sary re­pairs to the house.

"Bas­i­cal­ly, I wasn't al­lowed to fix it," he said. "If that con­trac­tor had been al­lowed to go a­head, it would have been done." The ma­son­ry con­trac­tor, Jeff­rey Cor­nell, agrees.

"That house would nev­er fall in," Cor­nell said. "It's been there 100 years. There's no doubt in my mind that I could have re­paired the foun­da­tion."

But at this point, Eide and his fam­i­ly seem re­signed to the i­de­a that their bat­tle is over.

"I think we've come to the con­clu­sion that the house is going to be torn down," said his son, David, who has helped his fa­ther with legal bills. Eide's only wish now is for more time to re­move his per­son­al ef­fects, as well as some vehi­cles he has stored on the prop­er­ty. A dead­line at the end of Jan­u­ar­y, he said, is too soon to re­move 40-plus years' worth of pos­ses­sions.

Eide won't be des­ti­tute. He owns a rent­al prop­er­ty in Minneapolis and has been liv­ing there. But he was count­ing on the rent­al in­come from that house to sup­ple­ment his So­cial Security pay­ments.

"I i­mag­ine I'll have en­ough to live on, but it's going to be rough," he said. "I­de­al­ly, what I'd like to do is fix this house. But it doesn't look like that's going to hap­pen."

John Reinan • 612-673-7402