Park City Preservation Alliance Board Member Dr. Lynne Sullivan to Council: Historic Overlay for Park City National Historic District Protects Places Important to People from Many Walks of Life

Park City Preservation Alliance board member Dr. Lynne Sullivan addressed City Council at the postponed second reading of the ordinance designed to protect more of the Park City National Historic District with local historic overlay zoning able to regulate changes that threaten the historic character of the District, Knoxville's largest but least protected National Register of Historic Places District.  Below, video of Dr. Sullivan's comments where she appealed to council for assistance on getting the historic overlay protections "back on track" to preserve Parkridge's Park City National Historic District in the face of rapid change. 

Text of Dr. Sullivan's remarks are below:

My name is Lynne Sullivan. My address is 1912 Washington Avenue in the Parkridge neighborhood.

I am here tonight to ask City Council to help Parkridge get H1 zoning back on track to protect the character and diversity of our neighborhood, by protecting the worker homes that predominate the proposed H1 expansion area.

I have lived within the current Parkridge H1 for 19 years, and as a PHD with 40 years of experience in a historic preservation field, I understand the difficulty in getting a National Register District approved. and the case that must be made to show the significance of cultural resources at a national level. I also know that historic preservation is not about creating “museums” of the rich; it is about protecting places that are important to people from many walks of life. Knoxville’s failure to protect the largest part of the Park City National Register District is by default preserving only the small section that includes most of the George Barber-designed houses. These Victorian houses largely were homes of upper middle class professionals in the late nineteenth century. They did not house mill workers and other tradespeople. Those homes make up the majority of houses in the proposed H1 expansion area. Ironically, opponents to the zoning expansion claim that preservation of the worker housing would harm today’s workers.

I served on the Board of Directors of the Parkridge Community Organization when, after a membership vote, the request was made of then-Councilman Brown to ask City Council to direct the Metropolitan Planning Commission to perform a feasibility study to determine whether H1 zoning, to include the rest of the National Register District in Parkridge, would be appropriate. This proposed extension is in City Council’s 10-yr Plan approved in 2014. The process was stopped last November by the Mayor at the last minute before the second Council vote that would have enacted the zoning. The neighborhood board was not consulted and received no communication from the city administration that an action to stop the final vote was being initiated because of “neighborhood opposition.” Significantly, at the annual neighborhood elections following that ill-fated council meeting, the three anti-H1 PCO board candidates failed to be elected by a vote comprised of the largest turnout of my neighbors a PCO election has ever seen.

Among issues H1 opponents failed to acknowledge is that historic preservation of architecture also is about sustainability--keeping houses out of landfills. Old home construction is significantly different from new home construction. Contractors unfamiliar with older construction can, and are, creating damage that will either require owners to make expensive repairs or will cause actual failure of the houses. For example, a home in the expansion area was “renovated” in preparation for sale, and its Craftsman-style roof brackets were removed to install new siding. Those brackets are not only integral to historic character, they also support the house’s eaves. The edges of the roof will fail without these brackets. Building codes staff cannot reasonably deal with such situations with historic homes. By the time they arrive for inspections, the damage is done. The Certificate of Appropriateness process through Historic Zoning is the route for providing expert advice at the beginning of a project.

Since the November “surprise,” renovation and flipping of houses in Parkridge has continued at an unprecedented pace. Housing prices are climbing because of market pressure. Building codes are the only regulation for most of the neighborhood. Small houses are being transformed into quarter million dollar homes. Flippers want fast cash and are not using the 20% Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credits that could be paired with affordable housing funds from HUD to keep decent, affordable rentals in the neighborhood. The historic zoning opponents are succeeding in keeping out regulation of the old homes, but this was accomplished at the expense of rapidly vanishing affordable homes as they are snatched up by flippers bent on a quick profit with no regard paid to either historic preservation OR helping to maintain Parkridge’s stock of affordable housing. [The City of Knoxville, by the interference of the mayor in the Council’s process, is failing at protecting the affordable historic homes. The character of the neighborhood is indeed changing, but not in the way most of its residents wanted. The Certified Local Government Program of the Tennessee State Historic Preservation Office has criticized the city’s stiffling of the public participation process. We hope future attempts by our neighborhood, and indeed all the neighborhoods in our city, to consider zoning standards, will be met with fairness and transparency. We appreciate the support we received from MPC during the two years we worked on this, and hope in the future city government will listen to all the voices in the neighborhood, and not the most strident.]*

The Park City National Register District is the largest such district in Knoxville. It also happens to be on the East side. What seems to be happening, intentional or not, is a new form of the urban renewal that destroyed neighborhoods in the 1960s. Again, ironically, historic preservation laws could have protected those neighborhoods. I ask City Council to help Parkridge get H1 zoning back on track to protect the character and diversity of our neighborhood by protecting the worker homes in the National Register District. My neighbor Tanner Jessel will discuss some legislative initiatives that could help this process.