Nearly three years after being red-tagged by the county for starting work prematurely, a San Francisco society couple has submitted plans to renovate and build on a six-acre property atop the Inverness Ridge. Alexis and Trevor Traina say they intend to preserve the handmade style of several cabins on the property, which they have named “Moonrise Kingdom” after the Wes Anderson film of that title. The retreat will serve as a vacation getaway for themselves and their young children.
The plans detail the repair and reconstruction of a half-barn, half-cathedral studio and three cabins built by the former owner, the late engineer Howard Waite, between the mid-1960s through the 1990s. Another cabin will be demolished and replaced with a 4,481-square foot, two-story home.
“There’s a certain rawness to the structures,” Ms. Traina said. “These are not buildings that have been pumped out a thousand times. We want to lean into the property’s historical relevance because it’s so compelling and rich.”
Born in 1907, Mr. Waite worked as a civil engineer for the United States government until the 1960s, when he and his wife, Cecil, bought the the Inverness Ridge property. He built most of the five structures with wood from nearby bishop pines, said Rufus Blunk, his grandson .
“His passion was building things and figuring out things,” Mr. Blunk said. “Anything he got his hands on was an engineering playground, if you will.”
Mr. Waite fashioned a model of what would become the main cabin from toothpicks he had kept on a mantle for years, all the while tinkering with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof design reliant on the strength of triangles. The cabin was completed in 1969.
Richard Olsen, an architectural expert who lives in Los Angeles, said the Waite cabin influenced several of the architects closely associated with the 1970s green movement. “This little cabin by an amateur designer-builder was a thrilling touchstone of earth-based creative possibility, at a time when there were few such sources of inspiration in architecture,” he wrote in an email to the Light.
Mr. Waite’s next project for the property began in 1984 after his daughter, Joni, requested a studio space. Inspired by windmills, he strapped together two 50-foot logs that would serve as the beginnings of what he called “the barn”; a second A-frame was built to enclose the structure in 1986, forming a tower that never quite morphed into a windmill.
During the Loma Prieta earthquake the following year, the barn shook so frightfully that Mr. Waite decided to construct a room beneath the tower. Still standing today, the barn sits like a cathedral with a spire jutting out that Ms. Traina said “looks like an airplane wing,” giving testament to the grandeur of Mr. Waite’s lofty architectural ideas.
Over the years, Mr. Waite built a workshop, a cabin at the head of a trail leading to a spring and a cubed storage shed. He and Cecil lived on the property until her death in 1997, after which he moved to Joni’s house in Kenya, where he lived until his death in 2004.
During that time, dozens of local residents lived on the property, which Mr. Blunk managed and Mr. Waite’s three sisters owned before selling to the Trainas in 2013. Mr. Blunk said the burning of Joni’s house in Kenya prompted the sisters to sell. “They decided it was an end of an era,” he said. “And they all desperately needed money.”
In the Trainas, Mr. Blunk sees able preservers of the land’s legacy. “I honestly think they’re genuine people and interested in preserving the historical legacy of the property,” Mr. Blunk said. “And if they could be a part of the community, that would be the best situation. It’d be nice if somehow the folks who don’t have a lot of money could benefit from the wealth in the hills.”
Since they were forced to halt work after the county alerted them to the need to secure a coastal permit, the Trainas have focused on complying with building regulations, such as how to preserve a prohibited but unique staircase built from fallen logs in the main cabin, Ms. Traina said.
The county’s planner for the project, Jocelyn Drake, said the plans for code compliance are coming along nicely. “We have a very nice submittal,” she said. “They’ve put a lot of work into it.” Construction would involve paving a dirt entrance road, building a fire truck turnaround with retaining walls, installing a new well and septic system and removing 20 tree, mostly bishop pines. (Another 30 trees were recommended for removal by an arborist.)
Bridger Mitchell, the vice president of the Inverness Association, said the group met with the Trainas last week to review the project. “We will remain engaged in the review process, and I expect will probably comment at the public hearing,” he said. “I would expect that Vision Road neighbors will definitely have concerns about traffic, noise and wear and tear on a road that is in rough shape.”
Ms. Traina told the Light that the couple had not begun interior design plans, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2014, they hired Ken Fulk to create an “old-time fishing camp theme.”
This article was corrected on Aug. 7.