ASTORIA, Ore. (AP) - After sitting vacant for more than two decades, the historic but neglected Flavel home is getting a new owner.
City Lumber Company co-owner Greg Newenhof agreed to pay nearly $222,000 in cash for the Astoria mansion, reports the Daily Astorian (https://bit.ly/1Som5Dt ).
“I’ve always just enjoyed that look to the house and thought, ’Wow, neat house,’” Newenhof said Thursday. He lives two blocks away and frequently walks and drives by the home at 15th street and Franklin Avenue.
He said he plans to move into the building once it is fixed up, joking that full restoration will probably take the rest of his life.
Empty since 1990, the mansion is a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-story Colonial Revival built in 1901 for the son of Capt. George Conrad Flavel.
It was owned by elderly Mary Louise Flavel, the granddaughter of Columbia River bar pilot Capt. Flavel, whose conservator agreed to sell the family home in December.
The sale puts an end to disputes between the family and the city over code violations. The conservator will use sale proceeds to cover unpaid and delinquent taxes on the home and pay the city $20,000 toward resolving judgments against Flavel.
Although it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, the deteriorating property has more recently been considered a blight on the city. A few blocks to the west, tourists flock to the Flavel House Museum, a Queen Anne-style building that was home to the older Flavel.
The city obtained an abatement warrant for the Flavel home in 2012 and essentially took control of the ramshackle property. But Mary Louise Flavel herself had eluded city officials for years.
“I don’t want Astoria to know where I am,” she told a reporter for The Daily Astorian who spoke with her at her Portland-area home in 2012.
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Information from: The Daily Astorian, https://www.dailyastorian.com
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