Marrying historic districts and infill.

[Kenosha]

From this months Planning Magazine:

quote: Something Old, Something New

Marrying historic districts and infill.

By Christine Kreyling

First the enemy was neglect. Then it was urban renewal. Now it's teardowns.

For seven decades, cities seeking to bolster the character of older neighborhoods have used preservation districts to fight against inappropriate development.

Their strategies may differ in the details, but the aim is the same. Older neighborhoods are hot targets for new investment, and preservation review boards are struggling to shape new construction into forms compatible with the older urban character.

Current hot spots include Charleston, South Carolina, where preservationists are shaking their heads over the proposed Clemson Architectural Center, now fighting its way into a historic district, and Nashville, Tennessee, where residents of two neighborhoods recently defeated conservation overlays meant to rein in teardowns.

From mess to success

In 1978, when the neighborhood of Edgefield successfully petitioned the Metropolitan Nashville Council for a preservation zoning overlay — the first in the city — this was territory that only an urban pioneer could love.

The area contains some fine architecture — Victorians to bungalows — and within the district, the fine-grained grid of streets is largely intact. But urban renewal had leveled houses and delivered public housing superblocks.

The construction of Interstate 65 between Edgefield and downtown had added a third wall to those of the housing projects. Old houses were carved up into small rental units, and new multifamily housing favored suburban models.

Slumlord neglect was also a serious problem. Crime rates were high and housing prices low. Potential buyers couldn't get mortgages or rehab loans; lenders had essentially redlined the area.

The Edgefield neighborhood association pushed the zoning overlay as a planning tool to halt the decline of community character and stabilize property values. With design guidelines administered by the Metropolitan Historic Zoning Commission, the overlay can control demolitions and regulate the preservation, restoration, and rehabilitation of existing structures as well as the design of new infill construction.

Nearly three decades later, much of Edgefield's original housing stock is single-family again, and most of the slumlords have been priced out of the market. Small cottages routinely sell for over $250,000; a recently restored mansion is on the market for over $1 million. Hip new restaurants, cafes, and music clubs are a draw for the entire city.

The turnaround in Edgefield and surrounding East Nashville cannot be credited solely to the preservation overlay. Also playing a part were a general downzoning, the use of federal Community Development Block Grants for small loans to restore exteriors and bridge the lending gap left by the banks, and the replacement of one public housing project with a mixed income duplex development courtesy of a federal Hope VI grant.

But when a tornado ripped through East Nashville in 1998, the overlay's design guidelines channeled insurance money in the proper direction, according to Ann Roberts, director of the Metro Historical Commission. "The overlays set standards for the repairs, and it wasn't just [for] the big Victorians," she says. "A lot of smaller houses that had been derelict were fixed."

Choices

As testament to the success of Edgefield, preservation overlays now encompass much of East Nashville and points west. The city currently has 13 preservation districts — with more in the works — covered by the two basic types of preservation zoning overlays used in the U.S. By state and local law, the design guidelines for both types are derived from the federal Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings, developed by the National Park Service.

The boundaries of three of Nashville's districts, including Edgefield's, are defined by a historic zoning overlay, which uses the stricter of the two types of design guidelines. To receive a preservation permit for changes or additions to the exterior of existing structures, property owners must comply with a set of criteria that deal with roof form and materials; front and side porches (no screening); the shape, style, and placement of windows and doors; allowable materials (no hardboard or masonite, aluminum, or vinyl cladding); lighting fixtures; fences; paving, and paint color (for masonry).

The rest of the city's preservation districts are covered by the less stringent conservation zoning overlay, which was pioneered in Nashville in 1985. These overlay design guidelines are principles that stress retaining the basic form of the structure and are therefore much less detailed. Vinyl siding is permitted for rehabs, and doors and windows may be changed.

Nashville's design guidelines for new infill construction are the same for both types of overlays and stress two principles: "New buildings should reflect the era of their own construction" yet be "compatible by not contrasting greatly" with the existing context.

Federal guidelines, local control

When it comes to preservation districts, Charleston was way ahead of the game. It enacted a historic zoning ordinance in 1931 and established a board of architectural review to regulate demolition and exterior changes to buildings within its Old and Historic District.

Before Charleston's effort to protect collections of buildings — New Orleans's Vieux Carre followed suit in 1936 — preservationists had focused on buildings of unique and individual status, such as Independence Hall, Mount Vernon, and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage.

It was urban renewal and the interstate highway system that energized the preservation movement in the 1950s and '60s. Edgefield's was one of many preservation districts established in the 1970s, following the adoption of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. Among other things, the law encouraged states to set up historic preservation offices to survey properties and to enact enabling laws so that local governments could establish review agencies to administer local preservation ordinances.

The philosophy behind placing regulatory power under local control, according to Norman Tyler in Historic Preservation: An Introduction to its History, Principles, and Practice, is "that each community should determine for itself what is historically significant, what is of value to the community, and what steps should be taken to provide protection."

Today, according to estimates by Drane Wilkinson, the program coordinator for the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions, an education and advocacy group at the University of Georgia, there are about 2,300 preservation commissions overseeing the physical welfare of over one million properties.

A lot of old architecture has been saved and restored. The economic impacts of this salvation are considerable, according to Donovan Rypkema, a principal of Place Economics, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate and economic development firm. Rypkema has analyzed the specific impacts of historic preservation in numerous communities and is the author of  The Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader's Guide. Among his findings:

Property value typically appreciates more in preservation districts than in similar neighborhoods that lack a preservation overlay.
Rehabilitation requires more labor than new construction. That labor force spends its dollars, both as consumers and taxpayers, in a local economy.
About 85 percent of all net new jobs are created by firms employing fewer than 20 people, and historic structures are appropriate sites for small business incubation.
In 2002, nearly half of the tenant-occupied housing built in the U.S. before 1950 rented for under $500 per month; 84 percent of the housing built after 1996 rented for over $500 per month.
Historic preservation has helped make heritage-based tourism one of the fastest growing segments of the visitor industry.
The preservation of historic buildings has been a key component of downtown revitalization — and that of surrounding first-ring neighborhoods.
Ultimately, historic preservation saves taxpayer dollars. It is fiscally irresponsible to build public roads, water and sewer, and schools in the countryside while abandoning historic buildings and their infrastructure.
One growing criticism of historic preservation districts, however, is that the rising property values deliver higher property taxes, undercutting the sustainability of affordable housing in some districts. That happened in the French Quarter of New Orleans and it is happening in historic districts in Charleston.

Shifting focus to infill

Preservation commissions and design review boards, which have traditionally dealt with existing structures, find themselves increasingly preoccupied with new infill construction.

Neighborhoods close to commercial centers, with mature trees and at least some houses with architectural character, are increasingly popular — and pricey. Buyers who can't find an old house that meets their needs, or a rehab they can afford, form a willing market for a new house — or duplex unit or condo — in an old neighborhood.

Developers also eye areas whose historic architecture and urban character have made them tourist attractions. Charleston and Miami Beach are prime targets for commercial and residential redevelopment, hotels and condos in particular.

These development pressures are not, of course, restricted to preservation districts. But by guaranteeing a minimum level of quality in architectural design, preservation districts have contributed to investor confidence in formerly marginal neighborhoods.

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards don't provide much guidance for new construction. The relevant standard that applies to new additions and exterior alterations merely states that "the new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing" of the older building.

"The standards aren't more specific because new construction is not really a federal or state matter," explains Richard Tune, the assistant director of the Tennessee Historical Commission. "The federal standards aren't normally used to judge new infill. That issue is usually addressed in local design guidelines for a specific district."

Left to their own devices, local commissions and review boards are thrashing out just what forms infill should take. They must juggle the competing interests of residents who favor a conservative, historicist approach; architects who want the freedom to push the design envelope; and planners who emphasize urban design and the desirability of greater urban density as an alternative to sprawl.

Charleston goes its own way

As befits the city with the nation's oldest historic district, Charleston does preservation a little differently. Its seven-member Board of Architectural Review operates without the safety net of design guidelines.

According to Eddie Bello, Charleston's preservation officer and city architect, the lack of guidelines allows reviewers to consider each proposal on its own merits. He suggests that guidelines can "reduce design to the lowest common denominator" by making the review process "checking off boxes."

Bello says that for new construction the review board "doesn't push a particular style," despite some residents' preference for Charleston's original neoclassical architecture. "Some people want only columns, but we're a lot of styles," he says.

BAR has seen a lot more proposals for new infill since the late 1990s. The scale, massing, and location of some of these proposals have raised concerns with Cynthia Jenkins, the executive director of Charleston's Preservation Society.

"The beauty of Charleston is that previous infill — and we had infill in 1850 — respected what was on either side," Jenkins says. "The tradition was that no building would be taller than our church steeples. That doesn't happen today. The land values have risen so much that everyone wants to build higher and occupy every square inch of space, especially downtown. The problem is that you don't build an 80- or 90- or 100-foot-tall building and maintain any sense of historic character, especially on our narrow streets."

She sees the lack of design guidelines as problematic. "Design guidelines can be ambiguous, and they can stifle good new architecture, but they put all developers on a level playing field and give BAR some text to refer to," she says.

Jenkins worries about a 190,000-square-foot Hilton hotel proposed for Marion Square, where the existing buildings are four stories tall. That "is like turning a Wal-Mart Supercenter on its side," she says.

BAR's critics have most recently focused on the conceptual approval it granted last November — with the proviso that the design needed a lot of work — for a new structure for the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston. The site is a parking lot across George Street from the 18th century Middleton-Pinckney house, one of the city's landmarks and the headquarters of the Spoleto Festival.

Among the complaints about the new architectural center: the intrusion of an institutional structure into the historic Ansonborough neighborhood, the size of the proposed building, and contemporary design. In its newsletters the local Committee to Save Our City describes the proposed design for the CACC as an "architectural hurricane."

Robert Miller, the center's director, counters that — after input from many public meetings — the original 24,000-square-foot envelope was reduced to 19,000 square feet, and the building will be only three stories tall. He points out that Ansonborough is a mixed use neighborhood. "The whole point of bringing our students here is so that they can live in an urban city, where they walk daily through the historic grain. You can't cover that experience in a lecture," he says.

With regard to the modern design by Kennedy & Violich of Boston, Miller adds, "I think we've been sensitive to the historic scale, texture, and materiality of the context. But it's architecture of our time."

Bello is sympathetic to Miller's position. "The city believes in mixed use; it's always had it." He notes that the CACC site "is near larger buildings — there's a huge auditorium 500 feet away — and the architects have done a lot regarding orientation to mitigate the impacts of the educational land use."

'Let's move forward'

Miami Beach established design guidelines for its 12 historic districts — including the mile-square Miami Beach Art Deco District — in 1986. What's distinctive about these guidelines is that they actively discourage the imitation "of past architectural styles and vernaculars" in new construction. This is a departure from most other cities, which usually encourage architecture "of our time" but permit some degree of replication.

"Our collection of buildings spans decades," says the city's design and preservation manager, Thomas Mooney, AICP. "We want to protect the integrity of the existing architecture by adding to the continuum" rather than repeating elements of it. "We already have great Art Deco; we don't need copies."

Mooney notes that several new construction projects approved by the seven-member Historic Preservation Board "incorporate previous architectural styles, or portions thereof, in a very abstract manner." But, he adds, "the key is that the untrained eye can tell the difference between old and new."

The one exception to the anti-imitation rule is for a historic structure that is so far gone it can't be saved. "We've had two cases in the past 10 years where we've allowed a faithful replication," Mooney says.

The Miami Beach guidelines insist, however, that new infill be compatible with the prevailing urban design of the context: scale, rhythm, height, and setbacks. And the rules encourage the use of materials historically used in South Florida — stucco, tile, clear glass, oolitic limestone.

Variety counts

"Indianapolis is a good city to study for how to handle infill, to show how the nontraditional can work," says Drane Wilkinson of the National Alliance of Preservation Groups. That's in part because the city has historically hosted "lots of stylistic variation," says David Baker, the administrator of the Historic Preservation Commission. "It's easier for us to be more flexible about infill than, say Charleston," he adds, "because our streetscapes aren't necessarily uniform."

The city's 15 preservation districts are seeing lots of new construction. In the 1970s and '80s, infill was largely restricted to speculative town houses, but in the last 10 years there's been increasing demand for single-family housing, much of it built on vacant lots created by a vigorous urban renewal campaign.

"A wide range of design expression is permitted within the design guidelines," Baker says, "although we discourage pattern book architecture. The crowd pleasers are historic looking, but the preservation staff encourages innovation. We're trying to create tomorrow's history today."

Historic zoning is applied in some districts and the more relaxed conservation zoning in others. "Conservation districts typically have fine neighborhood character, but the architecture isn't necessarily that great," Baker explains.

The design guidelines reflect these distinctions. "In New Augusta, a little town that's been subsumed by the city, the architecture is plain stuff. We allow vinyl siding because small towns in Indiana have lots of this siding. The point is to preserve the way the community is put together."

Both residential and commercial teardowns are common in Indianapolis. The result has been a push for overlays whose "motivation is not really preservation so much as more zoning control," Baker says. "But property rights advocates in some areas have opposed more government regulation. There's definitely some tension."

Nashville retro

Infill in Nashville's preservation districts tends to traditional, as is evident from the buildings recently recognized by the Metro Historical Commission's awards program. This is due in part to the fact that much of the new construction is speculative, and the majority of buyers find retro reassuring.

"We have few examples of contemporary design. Contractors are afraid to take the risk, afraid it may take longer to sell," says Lynn Taylor, whose firm, Taylor Made Plans, is doing a brisk business in East Nashville. Imitation is also cheaper. "There are lots of places to get stock plans. With contemporary design you need an architect, so it's more expensive."

The city's design guidelines discourage slavish imitation of past architectural styles, calling for infill to reflect the era of its construction. Historic zoning administrator Tim Walker explains that the review board may approve a design that imitates if it's done with modern materials. "A foundation will be split-face block rather than stone and siding cement fiberboard instead of wood," he says.

Walker adds that the commission generally insists that the new be less decorative than the old. "We've had people come in with plans from 1900 and they want to be completely imitative, with all the details, and we've told them they must simplify. It's a neotraditional approach."

Guidelines and overlay districts have their opponents, however. Architects complain about dumbed down design, and property rights advocates have another set of complaints. Recent initiatives to place conservation overlays on two neighborhoods went down to defeat. The measures were meant to counteract teardowns and inappropriate replacements.

For Richard Bernhardt, FAICP, the executive director of the Metro Planning Commission, urban design is the crucial planning issue. "You have to get back to the purpose of the guidelines," he says. "It's to conserve the character of a neighborhood as opposed to replicating the architectural styles of that neighborhood."

Drane Wilkinson, who works with preservation review boards and district residents all over the country, says the infill pressures "can fry the circuits of some commissioners, who are used to dealing with existing structures." Getting good new architecture of contemporary design in a preservation district ultimately comes down to education, he adds.

"The public and the commissioners have to be trained to recognize the visual characteristics of the neighborhood — solid-to-void ratios, rooflines, as well as scale and massing — and then apply those to new construction so that you don't get new buildings that poke you in the eye," Wilkinson says. "A very good example of contemporary design is the best way to quiet the fears, make people realize that modern design can really be okay."

Christine Kreyling writes about planning and preservation for the Nashville Scene; she is the author of The Plan of Nashville.

Images: Top — Two houses depict the wide range of design allowed within Indianapolis's preservation districts. Photo courtesy Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission. Middle — Most of the infill in Nashville's historic neighborhoods tends to resemble what's already there. Photo courtesy Metropolitan Nashville Historical Commission. Bottom — Unlike may other cities with historic districts, Miami Beach discourages new buildings that mimic old styles — "unless they're done in a very abstract manner," says Thomas Mooney, the city's design and preservation manager.


Resources
See the Secretary of the Interior's standards and related information at http://www.cr.nps.gov

Information about preservation in Nashville is at http://www.nashville.gov

Charleston: http://www.ci.charleston.sc.us; http://www.clemson.edu; and http://www.preservationsociety.org

Indianapolis: http://www.indygov.org

Miami Beach: http://www.miamibeachfl.gov

Background. Donovan Rykema's ideas about sustainable economic development are outlined in "Money Matters" (Planning, February 2005).