The Historic Preservation Task Force, after four months of work, is ready to present to council its efforts on the creation and passage of local historic districts. Chair Betty Baker, however, would like to see the emphasis shifted a little less toward the prevention of tear-downs and a little more toward preserving Austin’s history.
Austin’s inner-city neighborhoods have tried just about every tool in the zoning toolbox to nix “superduplexes” in single-family neighborhoods, including a recent, but somewhat odd, run to rewrite the city’s water-quality ordinance. Using the historic preservation ordinance to protest the tear-downs of homes that are neither architecturally outstanding nor locally historic has been one tactic. That, and the cost of historic exemptions, led to a recent rewrite of the 30-year-old historic preservation ordinance by an independent task force kept at arm’s length from the actual Historic Landmark Commission. It wasn’t long after that work was completed, however, before that task force was reconvened to discuss local historic districts. The districts, which would be created with the consent of a majority of local property owners, would give neighborhoods a type of deed restriction ability to designate architectural control standards and maintain desirable planning elements like setbacks.
At this week’s task force meeting, one of the points where the task force split was on how much documentation would be required to justify historic districts, which, under the proposed rules, would only require a brief narrative. Baker, the city’s former preservation officer, preferred a more complete review of owner occupancy on each building within the district. Others on the task force, historic preservation specialist Tere O’Connell and the Downtown Austin Alliance’s Charlie Betts, considered a narrative sufficient, noting that it would provide more context than straight occupancy. Betts, who once sat on the Historic Landmark Commission, told the task force he was worried too much documentation would be burdensome to interested neighborhoods.
Baker told the group that “dumbing down” the documentation requirements would miss the whole point of local historic districts. Without sufficient documentation, the districts are no more than another form of neighborhood conservation combining districts, she said. The final compromise among the members was limited documentation, on a percentage of the contributing buildings, every five years.
The task force will make other recommendations to council, including requiring a super-majority vote of the Historic Landmark Commission in landmark designation cases when there is owner opposition. That sets the bar higher for those cases, a desire of the council in the wake of a number of contentious arguments over historic designations.
This article appears in January 27 • 2006.