Protecting People and Places With Historic Preservation
Knoxville's urban renewal history of displacement instills fear that new investment flowing to East Knoxville may make historic Park City neighborhoods attractive to a broader range of people. This puts existing residents who may have lower incomes at a disadvantage: while current residents may accept blight and enjoy their neighborhood as-is, their options to remain in the community are limited as formerly multifamily rental units are redeveloped into single family, owner-occupied homes, or as enhanced living conditions permit landlords to charge higher rents.
As new investment removes blight and properties are brought back from the brink of demolition, property values increase. Blighted properties artificially depress the value of homes: many prospective homeowners simply do not want to live next to a home with 4 x 8 sheets of plywood nailed over windows or a tarp on the roof for years at a time.
Likewise, many tenants are less likely to accept blight. Blight doesn't mean "ugly" - it means hazards to human health like no heat, no air conditioning or a leaking roof where the landlord's solution is to place a tarp on the roof for months and even years. Pictured at right is an historic Park City home listed as contributing to the Park City National Register of Historic Places District where the landlord, owner of multiple properties in historic Park City, used a blue tarp for roofing on the rental property from October 2014 to March 2016.
Historic preservation is generally understood to increase property values. Exactly why historic district designations tend to raise property values is hard to say with certainty, but the outcomes in Knoxville's established local historic districts are clear: fewer 4 x 8 sheets of plywood or blue (or brown) tarps for a roof, and more willing home buyers and tenants. Historic preservation alone does not displace residents; it is hard to displace anyone from a boarded-up home. Still, a widely held fear is that historic preservation will displace people from Park City neighborhoods by increasing rents and home prices in a disruptive process similar to 1960s urban renewal.
These fears hold some irony: historic preservation laws could have stopped federally funded urban renewal projects of the 1960s.
Today, the threat is not so much the bulldozer as the slow deterioration of rot where investment is happening too slowly, or conversely the swift conversion of the neighborhood to something it was not designed to be where development is happening too rapidly. Historic preservation laws can be used to arrest the slow deterioration of the community due to rot and neglect, and where development is proceeding rapidly, historic preservation can slow rapid changes. Ironically, historic preservation can halt a modern, privately funded version of urban renewal currently unfolding in unprotected portions of Park City neighborhoods.
As new investment removes blight and properties are brought back from the brink of demolition, property values increase. Blighted properties artificially depress the value of homes: many prospective homeowners simply do not want to live next to a home with 4 x 8 sheets of plywood nailed over windows or a tarp on the roof for years at a time.
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| Blight evident at 2307 East Fifth Avenue home owned as a rental property. |
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| Vacant historic home with 4 x 8 plywood over windows. |
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| A Park City multifamily unit demolished after years of neglect. |
Today, the threat is not so much the bulldozer as the slow deterioration of rot where investment is happening too slowly, or conversely the swift conversion of the neighborhood to something it was not designed to be where development is happening too rapidly. Historic preservation laws can be used to arrest the slow deterioration of the community due to rot and neglect, and where development is proceeding rapidly, historic preservation can slow rapid changes. Ironically, historic preservation can halt a modern, privately funded version of urban renewal currently unfolding in unprotected portions of Park City neighborhoods.
Historic preservation is a tool to thoughtfully mediate with the forces of change.
Other communities have used preservation not to arrest time, but to thoughtfully mediate with the forces of change. An historic mill town in Durham, North Carolina is nearly identical to Park City, as described in the article "Using Preservation to Stop Gentrification Before It Starts." A key passage:
Other communities have used preservation not to arrest time, but to thoughtfully mediate with the forces of change. An historic mill town in Durham, North Carolina is nearly identical to Park City, as described in the article "Using Preservation to Stop Gentrification Before It Starts." A key passage:
According to Myrick Howard, executive director of Preservation NC and an expert on the state's mill houses, "Most mill villages are [currently] occupied by working class whites and blacks and Hispanics." They serve as affordable housing, that is, as they were initially designed to do. Many are physically declining, though. Given their small size, historic preservation might be a way to protect the homes without greatly threatening their affordability—while also celebrating their historic working class roots.
Historic preservation is a key component of a strategy to protect affordable housing.
In Knoxville, two types of zoning ordinances are available to offer a measure of protection to historic resources: Historic (H-1 or simply "H") and Neighborhood Conservation (NC-1 or "NC"). Both are intended to protect historic resources and come with design guidelines. However, "H" overlay is more restrictive. H-1 overlay actually regulates all exterior changes that would require review. NC-1 is less restrictive and is limited to demolitions and new infill construction.
NC-1 is not equipped to stop costly changes to small, historic homes. To illustrate the type of change allowable under a "Neighborhood Conservation" overlay district, consider the "before" and "after" photos of a recent flip in Park City National Historic District, pictured below. The remodel transformed a formerly modest mill house contributing to the historic character of Park City National Historic District into a home that reportedly "pre-sold" for nearly a quarter million dollars:
The home in the "after" version reportedly pre-sold for $244,900.
Historic preservation is the "key element" to preserving structure of historic neighborhoods.
In Durham, preservation is linked to other programs to conserve the people and places that form a community, including a neighborhood "with deep roots in the city's African American history." There, the city is adding loan subsidies and no-cost technical assistance to help older residents age in their homes. However, "local historic preservation designation will be a key element.
The full article: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/12/using-preser
In Knoxville, two types of zoning ordinances are available to offer a measure of protection to historic resources: Historic (H-1 or simply "H") and Neighborhood Conservation (NC-1 or "NC"). Both are intended to protect historic resources and come with design guidelines. However, "H" overlay is more restrictive. H-1 overlay actually regulates all exterior changes that would require review. NC-1 is less restrictive and is limited to demolitions and new infill construction.
NC-1 is not equipped to stop costly changes to small, historic homes. To illustrate the type of change allowable under a "Neighborhood Conservation" overlay district, consider the "before" and "after" photos of a recent flip in Park City National Historic District, pictured below. The remodel transformed a formerly modest mill house contributing to the historic character of Park City National Historic District into a home that reportedly "pre-sold" for nearly a quarter million dollars:
The home in the "after" version reportedly pre-sold for $244,900.
The formerly modest mill house has been heavily altered to add an "upstairs apartment or Airbnb space," according to the developer. NC-1 would not regulate this type of exterior change; H-1 overlay would. If adopted in November 2017 as requested by preservation advocates, the enacted historic overlay would have stopped these costly exterior changes to this formerly modest home. Without such costly alterations, the property would surely resell closer to its $55,000 sales price of May 2017. Instead, it pre-sold for just under a quarter million dollars.
This trend is not unique to Park City National Historic District.
Park City's "sister city" on the National Register of Historic Places is Golden Belt in Durham, North Carolina, described as "a racially diverse area with a mix of renters and owners" that "has always been a mostly working class community." Just like Park City neighborhoods, Golden Belt's "once-dormant downtown is lively again" and "young families are flocking to residential areas nearby," creating "sudden and extreme gentrification pressure." This pressure threatens the community's smaller, historic worker homes - most of them reported to be around 1,000 square feet - again similar to Park City National Historic District's vintage housing stock. Preservation limits what redevelopment happens - which "puts a ceiling on how expensive the homes can get." This keeps smaller workforce housing exactly what it was meant to be when it was constructed: affordable.This trend is not unique to Park City National Historic District.
Historic preservation is the "key element" to preserving structure of historic neighborhoods.
In Durham, preservation is linked to other programs to conserve the people and places that form a community, including a neighborhood "with deep roots in the city's African American history." There, the city is adding loan subsidies and no-cost technical assistance to help older residents age in their homes. However, "local historic preservation designation will be a key element.
The full article: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/12/using-preser
