After being inundated with phone calls and e-mails, the Edina City Council on Tuesday backed away from putting a moratorium on home tear-downs that make way for larger houses.

"I always thought we had a silent majority, but how do you hear from them?" said Council Member Ann Swenson. "Well, I've heard from them over the last two weeks. I heard from them in the grocery store, at a wedding ... I even heard from my brother, who never complains about anything ...

"I guess I've changed my mind ... We need to bring down the square footage of some houses. But I don't think a moratorium is the answer."

The four other council members unanimously agreed, and the moratorium died for lack of a motion.

At its previous meeting, the council had asked city staff to prepare an ordinance that would prohibit demolition of single-family houses in the city until April 15. Their action followed complaints from residents, mostly in the older eastern half of the city, that houses on small lots were being razed and replaced by "monster houses" that looked out of place and blocked sunlight and views.

Council members said the city will keep working on the issue without a moratorium.

Some home builders and developers had told the council that the city would suffer economically if it got a reputation as a place that stood in the way of development. Council Member Joni Bennett said she wasn't moved by those arguments, noting that speculative development had resulted in big "empty houses sitting around this city" that hadn't sold in a year or more.

"If builders and Realtors want the city to continue to be friendly, there needs to be a greater sense of responsibility among some builders," she said. She also said she didn't buy the big-houses-benefit-all argument some were making, saying that wiping out small single-family dwellings could make Edina a community only for the rich. "I want our community open to all," she said.

But Bennett said she was moved by individual stories of people who would have been harmed by a moratorium, such as a resident who told the council that not only the sale of his home but his purchase of a new townhouse might fall through if a moratorium passed.

"Perhaps a moratorium is not the answer, but we must come up with something better than what we have now," Bennett said.

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380