Texas Historical Commission meetings taking place in historic downtown Amarillo

This is the Santa Fe Building in downtown Amarillo. Formerly the national headquarters of the Santa Fe Railroad, it has been restored/renovated and is currently used for county offices.  The 11th floor contains a ballroom that is available for community meetings and it is in this space that the THC quarterly meetings are taking place. The opportunity to visit amazing places like this are one of the reasons I enjoy serving on the THC's Antiquities Advisory Board.

As it appears today, substantially intact and maintained.

The ballroom where our meetings are being held.

An overview of historic preservation and the increasing role of historic preservation tax credit incentives →

I was honored to be given the opportunity to share my thoughts on this subject with the remarkable Texas Architect Magazine. In here, I especially try to make the point that historic architecture is accessible architecture, you don't have to live in a large, modern city to experience it. Important historic buildings exist in almost every community and the tools we use in the cities are the same ones available to help restore them in smaller towns.

Historic Tax Credits: What's the role for them in our current tax reform?

The Federal Historic Tax Credit has proven to be a powerful incentive to keep and restore our important historic buildings, especially in Texas as documented in this report from the National Trust for Historic Preservation issued last year. It has been so effective, in fact, that many states, including Texas, have implemented their own state tax credit programs. In the inevitable chaos and maneuvering associated with great change in Washington, our friends at PlaceEconomics have published the following long list of reasons to keep the tax credits:

This headline has to be given the coveted title of Fake News: 'Historic preservation' blocks VA bid to save millions, help more vets

Thanks to Place Economics for finding this one. This headline from a story at the Washington Examiner illustrates how tabloid-style "journalism" can creep into seemingly legitimate news feeds and thus utterly distort the reality of working with historic buildings. The story goes on to explain, with little or no detail, how the VA is having difficulty monetizing excess building inventory because of "historic preservation". Given the lack of detail about what is happening, one can only guess about what this refers to. This would only be true if the VA's sole desire is to demolish each and every historic building and market only the land. If that's the case, then God bless historic preservation. What a calloused, lazy approach to real estate that would be. But as for the VA being prohibited from selling or remodeling the buildings - that is utter nonsense. There is a well-established process for transferring public buildings into the private realm. It's known as Section 106.

Been there. Done that. The photograph above is a project where we led the owner and design team through the Section 106 process of selling this 1931 Federal Post Office and Courthouse Building into private ownership (or most of it anyway). It is now a premier, award-winning, multi-family development in downtown Dallas. It even continues to retain the post office. There were challenges for this project, but the Section 106 process wasn't in the top tier. It was more about what you have to do to a Federal building that has been able to ignore local building codes for about 80 years. That's where the brain damage happens. 

Scape goats are very convenient and blaming historic preservation for money woes is a tired but still popular approach to finding a back door to getting at something else that building owners actually want.

Texas House Bill HB3418 Threatens Historic Landmark Programs Across Texas

At Tuesday's Urban Affairs Committee meeting, the Texas Legislature will consider a new bill that would fundamentally change the way local historic designations are created and administered across the state. In keeping with this session's theme of restricting local control, this bill would require language to be added to every new historic designation in the state and do much to make new historic districts harder to create and and administer. Under the bill:

Historic designations associated with an historic event, that event "must be widely recognized" as an historic event. No suggestion about how you define "widely recognized".

Historic designation based on association with a person, that person must have lived there. So apparently no commercial or institutional buildings primarily associated with famous business men, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. can be designated.

Votes for designation by plan commissions and city councils must be approved with 3/4 affirmative vote. It was much easier to get a Supreme Court Justice approved BEFORE last week's rules change. 

Applications for revisions to or removal of designated historic properties must be acted on by the municipality within 30 days. 

Many preservation-centric organizations are aligning to campaign against this bill. Hopefully, it is enough.

Alamo Master Plan to be Revealed at Public Meetings

Billed as "The Big Reveal", the Alamo Master Planning Team will take the wraps off of their work in two upcoming public meetings:

Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:00 pm

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 6:00 pm

Both meetings will be held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. More conveniently, the meeting will be live streamed on the ReImagine the Alamo Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ReimagineTheAlamo/

The Mission Inn, Riverside, California

Over Spring Break we had the opportunity to visit The Mission Inn in Riverside, California. The earliest parts were built about 1900 and it has been added to and renovated multiple times over the decades. An unusual historic building with an interesting story.

Six Practical Reasons to Save Old Buildings (Even if you don't think they look good today)

I wanted to post this article from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in honor of the Crossman Block, a row of early 1900's commercial buildings in downtown Garland that have defined the east side of the city square since their construction. On March 21, the Garland City Council voted 7-1 to demolish the buildings in favor of more downtown open space. With that decision goes the $428,500 paid to purchase the building 3 years ago, the $88,000 cost for demolition and disposal, and about $517,000 in possible historic tax credits. All into the landfill. About $1 million total value with more than half in taxpayer cash.

About 1910. Like many downtown historic buildings across the country, poorly conceived modifications have removed much of the architectural character of the facade. It just doesn't look this good anymore. But the remainder of the original buildings are still there and historic integrity, like beauty, is more than just skin deep.