Soccer Dad

Every form of refuge has its price

For somewhere between $300 and $500 a group of 30 people can rent an unusual venue to watch the La Crosse (Wisconsin)Loggers (not Bloggers) play baseball. In fact the cabin has become so popular, the Loggers are building a second one to accomodate their fans.

The price for Austin Spriggs's home, was quite a bit higher. Located in an area being developed into luxury condominiums, Spriggs refused an offer of $2.5 million - saying he would have sold for $5 million. The city appraised the value of his house at about $200,000.

The crater is a block long, a block wide and four stories deep, a canyon on Massachusetts Avenue NW between the Washington Convention Center and Union Station.

Earthmovers, so far down at the bottom that they resemble Tonka toys, burrow even deeper. Diesel engines groan, front-loaders beep and the ground shudders with each strike of the steel buckets from the backhoes. Dump trucks shudder up a dirt hill in a dusty convoy from the pit to the street. The pile driving, with its thunderous rhythms, is poised to begin.

And there, on the edge of this gaping chasm, is a stunning symbol of defiance: a tiny townhouse, clinging to a spit of remaining earth.

A net of steel pipes and heavy brackets has been positioned to prop up the house on three sides, but it looks as if at any moment it might crash into the hole. Just three feet of land on either side separate the house from the 40-foot drop-off.
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Securing the Spriggs house during construction has added about $600,000 in costs, which is split between Penzance and Broadway. The house is monitored five days a week to make sure it isn't moving, said Doug Lewis of Davis Construction. The work, which started in December, is scheduled to be finished next year.

And if the situation isn't surreal enough, Spriggs is turning his home into a Ledo pizza franchise.

Technorati tags: Austin Spriggs, Ledo Pizza, /spike/, minor league baseball.