Zoning districts seek to protect Austin neighborhoods[/caption]

A contentious effort to preserve a South Austin neighborhood has sparked debate over how involved the city should be in establishing historic districts.

Bluebonnet Hills gained initial approval June 11 from Austin City Council to become a local historic district after 10 years of effort, according to supporters, which make up roughly half the neighborhood. However, because more than 20 percent of Bluebonnet Hills residents currently are against the historic district, city code requires ultimate approval from a super-majority of City Council, or nine of 11 members, when the zoning case returns Aug. 13 for a potential final vote. Only seven council members supported the historic district during the June 11 first reading, meaning there may need to be more neighborhood consensus for the historic district to gain final support, Mayor Steve Adler said.

If approved Bluebonnet Hills would become the fourth historic district—all in Central Austin—approved since 2004 when the city first started preserving entire neighborhoods. Before the creation of historic districts, the city only granted historic landmark status for individual structures. There are 599 historic landmarks located in Central Austin, according to city records, and 186 national historic landmarks.

However, Austin has fewer historic districts than any other major Texas city, according to research from advocacy group Preservation Austin. Some neighborhoods may be deterred from seeking historical protection because the approval process is so burdensome, according to feedback received by Steve Sadowsky, the city’s chief historic preservation officer. The creation of a historic district will not be considered by the city until a neighborhood submits evidence showing its historic value, he said, as well as proof there is majority support from residents.

“The process came out of a desire to have the [request to become a historic district] come out of the neighborhood,” Sadowsky said. “The city did not want to impose these historic districts on the neighborhoods.”

The burden increases, he said, when communities seek protections for larger areas. For example, the attempt to historically preserve Bluebonnet Hills initially started as a broader effort to protect all 1,200 homes in Travis Heights.

As the scale of the proposed district decreased, so, too, did approval from neighbors despite initial majority support.

“No other application has had its level of support dip below 50 percent, and it did in Bluebonnet Hills,” Sadowsky said. “Now they are back above the threshold.”

Historic case study

Bluebonnet Hills has become a sample case for other neighborhoods considering whether to apply for historic protections, said Michele Webre, a Bluebonnet Hills resident who helped spearhead her community’s initiative. Her neighborhood would be the first district approved by Austin to not have already gained recognition from the Historic Register of National Districts, which Webre said is largely symbolic. She cites Rainey Street as one failed example.

“There’s no protection—it’s really just an honor,” she said. “It doesn’t protect against demolitions, and really doesn’t have any teeth to it.”

There are no incentives to being designated as a national historic district, Webre said, whereas property owners within Austin’s historic districts can receive tax relief for improving—instead of demolishing—historic structures.

But in every proposed historic district in Austin there have been residents opposed to the design standards implemented as part of the preservation effort. Bluebonnet Hills resident Angela Reed said those design standards merely serve as guidelines to protect the front-facing portion of homes.

“[Many of the] facade standards are suggestions and not a requirement,” Reed said. “The spirit [of the design standards] is to try to maintain enough protections to keep the historic character of the neighborhood.”

Arif Panju, a Bluebonnet Hills resident who said he opposed the historical district, argues his neighborhood has no noted original homebuilders, architects, landmarks or structures worthy of protection. He also claims the design standards, which are ultimately administered by the city’s Historic Landmark Commission—a board on which Panju serves—limit homeowners from making meaningful changes to their properties.

“One thing about this neighborhood: It’s very eclectic and expressive,” he said. “By standardizing [design] rules in this neighborhood, it tries to standardize what this neighborhood should look like and robs people of their right to be creative.”

Learning from the past

So far, design standards in other historic districts have not stifled renovations, Sadowsky said.

“Once a local historic district has been established, there is very little talk of discontent,” he said. “Those districts seem to work very well.”

Other districts include Harthan Street off West Sixth Street, the Castle Hill neighborhood and Hyde Park, which was the last approved historic district in late 2010 following an equally contentious debate.

There have since been two demolitions approved within Hyde Park’s historic district, and eight buildings have been torn down in the part of the neighborhood outside the district, according to Lorre Weidlich, Hyde Park Neighborhood Association co-president who five years ago led efforts to gain historic protection.

“You have to understand there’s a tradeoff—you have to be willing to give up certain property rights,”  she said. “I’m just glad we preserved as many historic structures as we could.”

That is a tradeoff Panju and other historic district opponents have been unwilling to accept. Panju recommends a fairer process to initiate historic districts that does not involve the city’s chief preservation officer as lead liaison.

“Are we going to continue to do these [historic districts] under failed policy, or are we going to fix it?” he said.

District proponents agree the policy needs changed, but for different reasons.

“The burden is really on the neighborhood to instigate and coordinate the process themselves until the application is submitted,” Preservation Austin President-elect Alyson McGee said. “That’s a really daunting thing for volunteer citizens to do.”

Preservation Austin Executive Director Kate Singleton recommends Adler create a task force in charge of incorporating best practices from other cities into Austin’s historic district approval process. For example, while serving as a Dallas preservation officer, Singleton said the city held public meetings and coordinated the application process.

Ultimately she said design standards implemented in historic districts help neighborhoods control their own destiny.

“When developers take down house after house, there’s no self-determination for the neighborhood,” she said. “And it’s very hard after the fact to try to stop that from happening.”