Mega-House Or Nightmare? Finn Hill's Mystery Home -- James Vesely

FOR those not following details of the Finn Hill temple-house, the story is too good to miss.

Finn Hill is a nice neighborhood just north of Juanita Drive, which is just north of Kirkland in an area between Kirkland and Bothell, close to the northeast shores of Lake Washington.

Imagine the community's surprise to learn that King County had granted a building permit to construct a single-family home of unusual dimensions.

The building will be the new home of Chu-chao Chin and his wife, Chu We Tao. The couple is insisting the home will be their residence and will be a single-family home, just as others in the neighborhood. The county approved the plans and allowed construction. Here's what the home will have, based on plans submitted to the county:

The 25,000-square-foot structure will form a long rectangle with broad steps leading to an entry-porch. Inside, the home will have a commercial-size kitchen with multiple refrigerators, several clothes washers and dryers, 36 bathroom sinks, 24 toilets, 18 showers and six urinals. The home will have a ballroom, but also dormitory bedrooms with shared baths in addition to master-bedroom suites, presumably for the owners, or maybe their guests. The Chus have asserted all along - including in one affidavit - that this dream house is simply their own home.

Neighbors are skeptical. Enough to choose an attorney and hold a candlelight vigil for their neighborhood this past Saturday night.

County officials seem transfixed - like deer in the headlights - by the wattage of their own regulations. One county building official said it was not the county's job to pass judgment on how people design their own homes. The county has warned the Chus that operating the home as anything but a residence - say, for instance, as a school or temple - carries serious implications.

Implications to the neighborhood go much deeper.

Taken apart piece by piece, the debate over the mega-home is easy to trivialize: Not since Bill and Melinda Gates built a home in Medina has there been this much attention to a new house. Or, if you take all the commercial kitchens out of Eastside homes, how is anybody going to throw a dinner party? Who's going in there, the von Trapp family?

One look at Finn Hill makes the jokes go away. Right on the edge of shifting from sheep pasture to tri-levels, the neighborhood perches between rural and suburban modesty. The Chu mansion is rising across a small residential street from a cul-de-sac of average homes nicely kept. The mansion's wood framing goes on for yards and yards as the house takes shape. Whether or not it is legal - or just - the house simply overwhelms the neighborhood. The only comparison I can think of is docking the USS Enterprise down the hill at Juanita Beach.

"The county has murdered in cold blood the Growth Management Act and zoning laws," said Rick Ocherman, an attorney and neighborhood resident.

He's got a point. The property is zoned R-8, suggesting the county believes more than seven homes per acre should go in there. Somehow, comments on the project by a county examiner were excised from the record. Worse is the question of how the county can look at the building plans and not see what everyone else sees as an assembly hall, or temple. The county has, in effect, asked the neighborhood to forfeit its common sense.

"I'm kicking myself," Ocherman said. "We had a chance to be annexed by Kirkland, and I voted against it. That was a big mistake. Kirkland would never allow this in a residential neighborhood."

Late last week, County Councilwoman Jane Hague proposed legislation that would demand a public comment period of 21 days and local notification for neighbors of mega-houses. Ocherman thinks highly of the idea and of Hague's intervention, which may be too late in this case.

But keep in mind, the Chu building is not one family's mega-house the way Microsoft builds them. The plans don't show a home, they show an assembly hall. Yet, the county's Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES) rigidly asks us to believe otherwise.

As of Friday morning, hammers were pounding away at Finn Hill's mystery home. Everything is being paid for in cash, Ocherman said - maybe a $2 million package, total. Once built, it's there to stay in the neighborhood, no matter what subsequent legal action follows. Trying to stop it now after construction is under way and permits issued, would put the county in an interesting legal position.

To the rest of the county, it's not very important if the building is going to be a Taoist temple, as some neighbors believe, or if the Chus have been honest or deceived DDES about one parcel. What becomes important is if the county's land-use authority - its ability to regulate the land beneath us - is credible.

James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Monday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com