It grows and grows, and where it will stop, nobody knows.

The Monster House on the corner of N. 61st Street and Fremont Ave. N. has defiled all sense of proportion and propriety as it kept rising higher and growing fatter. It now towers over street level, blocking light from neighbors, dwarfing nearby homes and creating an aura of rudeness, greed and disrespect in an otherwise neighborly setting.

The insults of megahouses and McMansions have been so well-documented elsewhere, including a 60 Minutes report in November, 2005, that Seattle denizens may have thought our communities immune. But an epidemic of these things has suddenly hit, facilitated by a rubber-stamp city approval process that only now is beginning to reflect some sensibility of factors other than developer wallets.

Several neighbors have protested the Monster House to City Council representatives, including new Council members who ran on platforms of neighborhood preservation, in addition to the Department of Planning and Development (DPD), which issues construction permits. Two issues in particular have been raised: Height and lot coverage.

The developer has attempted to finesse the code. The previous home on the lot was reincarnated as a much taller, bigger "carriage house" next to the main structure. Then the two were adjoined, forming the present configuration. Overall, the Monster House looks more like a Holiday Inn, with a huge street-level parking lot and enclosed-walkway to a south "wing," all girdled in a formidable concrete barrier between sidewalk and property.

In a letter to DPD, across-the-street neighbors Walter and Linda Charm noted the legal limit of 35 percent lot coverage. It's up to authorities to do precise measurements, but the human eyeball is skeptical of anything approaching 35 percent at the site.

Also according to DPD, the carriage house, or "southern portion," "appears to have used code provisions that allow preservation of portions of non-conforming structures." Yet not a splinter of wood was saved from the previous home, which was demolished in the manner common to "teardowns."

Height also seems to have been pushed right to and perhaps even slightly beyond allowable limits of 35 feet from slope. A letter from DPD states, "Seattle Land Use Code for Single Family zones allows a 30 foot high structure, with an additional five feet to the top of a pitched roof. This height generally accommodates a three-story design."

Beyond whatever city code allows, one has to wonder what kind of "neighbor" would build such an abomination, knowing the resentment and loathing it engenders in the community.

Word is that the developer plans to live in the Monster House for two years (to avoid capital gains taxes), then "flip" it, leaving his successors to deal with simmering local resentment. Lacking any of the usual human-species restraints, such as sensitivity to neighborhood architecture and impacts on neighbor property, flippers leave their arrogant legacy for someone else to deal with.

As far as any recognition of the greater "green" and environmentally responsible ethics involved, Monster Houses are farcical, even if they include recycled bamboo flooring from some across-town teardown. The carbon footprints of such wasteful structures make Bigfoot look like sparrow markings.

If we as a society are really serious about curbing global warming and preserving the Earth, we have to start implementing our values at a local and personal level. The energy and consumption requirements entailed in construction and maintenance of Monster Houses directly contradict any green guidelines, from the Kyoto Protocol on down.

Indications are that city fathers are waking up to public outcry. Rick Barrett and the Seattle Community Council Federation have led formation of a new group, Livable Seattle, to guide future multi-family zoning and other building-sensibility issues. The group is working closely with the City Council's Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUNK) to, among other things:

"Clarify and strengthen the urban village strategy so that buildings outside villages actually do conserve the diverse and individual characteristics of Seattle's cherished neighborhoods and so that the buildings inside villages actually do produce over time new or revitalized neighborhoods of comparable merit."

Another cornerstone of the Livable Seattle plan: "Change the planning culture to one that invites us all to participate as we come to public judgment, instead of one that imposes expensive misunderstandings, wasting time, money of all varieties, and our physical environment."

These are encouraging words. Let's hope authorities can take them into account as soon as possible, to avoid repeats of debacles like the Monster House.

To add your name to the list protesting the Monster House, here are some starting points.

Members of the City Council's Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee:
sally.clark@seattle.gov 684-8802 (chair)
tim.burgess@seattle.gov 684-8806 (vice chair)
tom.rasmussen@seattle.gov 684-8808
jean.godden@seattle.gov 684-8807(alternate)
Other Councilmembers (they, too, need to hear from you on this issue)
richard.conlin@seattle.gov 684-8805
jan.drago@seattle.gov 684-8801
bruce.harrell@seattle.gov 684-8804
nick.licata@seattle.gov 684-8803
richard.mciver@seattle.gov 684-8800

DPD contacts include:

Director Diane Sugimura, email click here. Also email Brennon Staley, land-use planner