The last three issues of The Paper have carried letters by Mike Stahl expressing his opposition to the proposed Historic District in Skinker-DeBaliviere. His main concerns are 1. that the ordinance has not been fully presented to nor supported by the neighborhood and 2. that the result of the ordinance will be to force poorer families from the neighborhood through tougher building code enforcement and higher maintenance costs, and rising property values.
The Historic District Committee in answering the first charge recalls the great length if time this has all taken—two years and about forty meetings (committee meetings, block meetings, neighborhood organization meetings, meetings with the CDA, RAC, SDCC, local businessmen and zoning officials, plus phone calls and letters to property owners, railroads, the street department, etc.) At each stage articles were printed in The Paper, perhaps ten over the two year period reporting these activities.
The make-up of the committee included representatives from all over the neighborhood, 14 of us all together, and we decided from the onset that our function should be to study the question and present our findings to the SDCC for any ultimate decisions.
We began by looking at the potential benefits and problems in historic district legislation, and then proceeded to explore the possible ways it could be used in Skinker-DeBaliviere. Historic Districts have been formed in nearly all large older cities in the U.S. and Europe. All are different in their history, physical-appearance, and present goals and realities. In the creation of a new Historic District it is extremely important to fit the legislation to the specific condition of the area and its’ people.
We identified four alternative approaches to compare and consider: 1) Restoration, 2) Conservation, 3) Rehabilitation, and 4) Alteration. A set of architectural standards and a neighborhood plan were worked out for each alternative. These were presented in February, 1976, to the SDCC board which studies and debated at length (two meetings, 7½ hours) before choosing the Rehabilitation alternative and tailor-making a set of standards and development plan.
The results were printed in the April, .1976, issue of The Paper followed by several neighborhood meetings. Suggestions were taken and adjustments and additions made. Again, this spring, The Paper will run the full set of standards and plan. We of the Historic District Committee feel that both the exposure of the planning and the placing of the decision making procedure in the hands of elected representatives on the SDCC have made this procedure as open and democratic as is humanly possible.
Mike Stahl’s second concern, the threat posed by the Historic District to the economic mixture of our neighborhood, can be partially answered by the manner in which our specific regulations were arrived at. With Council members making the decisions, the realities of the neighborhood were the first consideration: The strict “Restoration” alternative was deliberately rejected as being economically impractical for us, and the less demanding “Rehabilitation” was chosen. A careful reading fo the standards will find them reasonable and yet able to preserve the overall aesthetic quality of our streetscapes.
Regarding discrimination by code enforcement, Historic District regulations and the enforcement of the Building Code are entirely separate. Historic District standards are applied when a building permit is taken out involving work on the front exterior of a building. They are not applied to existing conditions as are Building Code regulations. Of course, the aesthetic aim of the HistoricDistrict is for building owners to maintain the original architectural integrity of their property as it affects the appearance of the street, but notice the frequent use of “encourage” rather “require” in the standards chosen by the Council.
Mike Stahl fears that Historic District standards may be used to intentionally drive someone from the neighborhood. The deciding city body, the Landmarks and Urban Design Commission, is an apolitical group of citizens representing and serving the entire city. They would be grossly violating their purpose if they were to allow themselves to be so used, and their performance to date certainly indicates no such abuse.
Finally, Mike worries that rising property values might turn the neighborhood into a “high income ghetto,” exluding buyers of more moderate means. While it is true that city property values in stable neighborhoods are rising, and perhaps more so in Historic Districts, the favorable reaction of banks and their great willingness to make loans in such area., should be of help to people needing substantial amounts of financing. This would alleviate a longstanding problem in the neighborhood.
All of us on the Historic District Committee and certainly the neighborhood’s leaders fully agree with Mike that one of our greatest strengths in Skinker-DeBaliviere is our heterogeneous economical and social character. However, this did not just happen. The natural course of events in old city neighborhoods, especially in the central corridor in St. Louis, is one of high mobility, general decline and eventual abandonment. To the extent that this process has been interrupted and we have achieved and economically mixed neighborhood, credit must be given to tremendous efforts over the years by individuals, groups and neighborhood improvement programs. The historic district legislation is being applied here, not to create a quaint sterile replica of the past, of interest only to tourists, or, as Mike fears, a picturesque high income ghetto. Rather, building on a physical asset—our architecturally interesting houses and the still-intact visual continuity of our streets —it is being used as another tool to preserve an urban neighborhood—and our valued heterogeneity.
The Historic District Committee
Originally published in The Paper, April 1977.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Printed length if time, studies and debated, reading fo, exluding and achieved and economically mixed retained.
Original source: SD_Times1977_04.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
