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The fate of two landmark structures located just east of Telegraph Avenue rests in the hands of three Berkeley developers, two of them planning major developments and the third planning a new home for the vintage dwellings. 

Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board get their first look at plans for one of the houses Thursday—the Ellen Blood House, a two-story 1891 Queen Anne Victorian now at 2526 Durant Ave. 

Ruegg & Ellsworth, a Berkeley development firm which hopes to build the Durant Apartments Project at the site of the Blood House, has filed applications for demolition of the Blood House and construction of their apartment complex. 

The demolition permit doesn’t mean the venerable structure is headed for the chopping block. Instead, if all goes as planned, developer John Gordon will relocate the structure to a pair of lots he owns at the southwest corner of the Dwight Way/Regent Street intersection. 

Ruegg & Ellis project manager Brendan Heafey said that the firm has an agreement to sell the building to Gordon for $1. 

The move won’t include an addition at the southwestern part of the building, Heafey said. An earlier measurement of the home and the relocation site by a Daily Planet reporter revealed the house wouldn’t fit with the addition. 

The Durant Street home was designated a structure of merit by the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission in September 1999, over the objections of Ruegg & Ellsworth, whose appeal to the City Council failed a month later. 

The developer’s plans for the vacated si te call for construction of a 44-apartment mixed-use building with two retail store fronts and 17 stacked parking spaces.  

Gordon’s plans for his property also include the move of a second landmark, the John Woolley House at 2509 Haste St., one of Berkel ey’s oldest homes, built in 1876. 

If all goes as planned for both homes will be moved to Gordon’s lot at the southwest corner of Regent Street and Dwight Way, where they will be refurbished. 

The Woolley House is currently owned by UC Berkeley, and devel oper Ken Sarachan, owner of Rasputin Music and Blondie’s Pizza, is in negotiations with the university to buy the property to add to land he already owns at the northeast corner of the Haste Street/Telegraph Avenue intersection to build a mixed use projec t of his own. 

Sarachan filed plans last September to build a structure that starts at two stories at the Telegraph Avenue end of the property, rising to five floors at the property’s eastern end. As planned, it would include three ground-floor commercial spaces, a second-floor restaurant with a roof garden and 20 one-bedroom apartments. 

For decades, Sarachan’s property housed the Berkeley Inn, a single room occupancy hotel that catered to low income tenants. A 1986 fire destroyed 77 of the units and a s econd fire in 1990 finished what the first blaze had started. 

A subsequent plan to have Resources for Community Development—the same non-profit building the housing component of the David Brower Center complex—build a 39-unit apartment building on the si te failed, and when that plan died, Sarachan bought the property in 1994. 

Sarachan was forced to file development plans last September or risk paying $800,000 in liens against the property. 

Heafey said both projects are dependent on city approval of the structural moves to Gordon’s property. 

Because both structures are designated as historic landmarks, the city’s Landmark’s Preservation Commission will also have its own say in the moves. Heafey said Gordon will be presenting his plan to the commission. 

“We hope to have the approvals to move the houses between six months and a year,” Heafey said. 

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