Pokin: 'Historic' designations from Landmarks board too easy, OK from City Council too hard

I am a columnist, and I have opinions.

I have several on the recent debate in Springfield over whether a resident or a community group should be able to nominate someone else’s property for historic status when the owner objects.

My main two observations about the process pull in different directions.

First, it seems to me that it's too easy to get an historic designation from the Landmarks Board in cases where the property owner objects. Nine civic-minded volunteers, appointed by City Council, serve on the board.

It is clear to me that the Landmarks Board is one of advocacy —“to help promote the creation and use of the historic sites, historic landmarks, and historic districts for the educational, cultural, economic, and general welfare of the public through preservation, protection, and regulation.”

As a result, in following its own amorphous guidelines — which allow for the recommendation of a historic site even if the person who actually owns the property is opposed — the board could nominate, say, a 20-year-old McDonald’s restaurant, if there were enough old guys who had been gathering there for coffee over decades.

The board could consider the structure a significant part of the historic and cultural fabric of the surrounding neighborhood.

As a layman, I was surprised that there is no minimum age for a structure and that alterations done to the structure over the decades have little importance in the decision. In fact, you don’t even have to explain or list the alterations on the application.

Pulling in the other direction is the fact that the City Council has a chokehold on approval. When the property owner objects and follows city policy in making that objection, it takes a super-majority vote (six votes on a nine-member Council) to obtain historic designation.

The rules changed to require a super-majority in 1997 after the Landmarks Board presented a recommendation to designate Drury University's Stone Chapel, built in 1880, as historic, as well as several other structures.

Drury President John Moore adamantly opposed the idea. He said the college had done a fine job of taking care of the chapel and would continue to do so without — in his view — the interference of city government and what he considered an unnecessary layer of “bureaucracy.”

In a conversation this week, Moore stands by that decision and said the proof is in the pudding. Drury has protected the chapel well.

Michael Spralin, a senior city planner and liaison to the Landmarks Board, told me Friday that, yes, a council vote of 6-3 would have been needed on June 3 to make a building in Galloway Village a historic site. 

The measure received only four votes, with five in opposition. Much was made of the fact that Mayor Ken McClure changed his vote to no — after accidentally voting the other way — but it would have made no difference if a super-majority was required. The newspaper tried to confirm this with City Clerk Anita Cotter, who did not respond to phone calls and an email Friday.

I wondered if this 1997 super-majority requirement affected the process. Does it make it almost impossible to get six yes votes — when an owner objected — in the Ozarks, where property rights are particularly paramount?

At that June 3 meeting, Mary Lilly Smith, the city’s director of planning and development, said that in the past 20 years, only seven requests for historic designation have come before the council. All had the blessing of the property owner, she said.

According to the information on the Landmarks Board website, in the 1980s, City Council approved 88 such applications.

I suppose it's possible that the decrease in applications to the council over the past 20 years  is a good thing.

But on the surface the reduced flow of historic applications seems like a bad thing for the overall public good.

If you blight it, they will come

Some of the residents of Galloway formed the Galloway Village Neighborhood Association in November.

At the time, they had been talking with a developer about his plans for four parcels of prime real estate across from Sequiota Park on South Lone Pine Avenue.

The residents have acknowledged that they organized late in the game as major developments have transformed Galloway, which was once a quaint town built around a quarry operation, independent of Springfield.

It became part of the city in 1969 on a vote taken by residents of Springfield only — not those living in Galloway.

Many of those living there today still feel left out in the decision-making that affects their lives.

Things have happened incredibly fast in Galloway.

The rapid growth is the result of a measure authored by City Council in 2014.

The council wanted development in Galloway and designated 75 acres along South Lone Pine Avenue as blighted, which provided developers with tax breaks, should they want to participate.

Did they ever.

Galloway has seen the addition of a 10,000-square-foot spa, luxury apartment buildings with several hundred apartments and a craft brewery. The area is barely recognizable.

These early developments, I imagine, have made several former Galloway property owners rather wealthy. 

But on a different front, what needed to happen in Galloway did not. The developer and the residents needed to engage with at least a minimal level of trust.

Hopefully, that will occur in the future — though it might be with a different developer.

In reading news stories about development in other older areas of Springfield, it's clear that cooperation between residents and developer is key.

Development currently underway in Rountree is one great example.

And the survival of 87-year-old Timmons Temple, an African American church made of stone, is a remarkable story of how the developer gave dedicated volunteers enough time to raise money to physically move the church and how the Park Board welcomed it with open arms in Silver Springs Park.

Never in a million years did I think that was going to work.

More:Black History Summer Academy's field trip to Silver Springs Park

More:Timmons Temple move

The developers of the four parcels across from Sequiota Park are husband and wife Mitchell and Amanda Jenkins, who own Elevation Development Company. At a June 3 council meeting, Mitchell told the story of how he proposed to Amanda four years ago in Sequiota Park.

The relationship between the couple and the residents of Galloway, already frustrated by rapid development, has been rocky. In fact, Elevation has now put the land up for sale.

Jenkins met with residents in June 2018, and they did not like his plans for a mixed-use development of apartments on top floors and retail on the bottom floor. The new building would replace the 90-year-old structure currently there.

That building, called the Sequiota Store/Treadway's General Store & Gas Station, decades earlier had been a filling station and general store. It is one of the few older buildings left in Galloway. It has been extensively remodeled over the years.

Jenkins changed his plans and addressed what he considered the top concern of residents. He committed to saving the stone building next door that once housed the Sequiota Bike Shop. He said he would make it a “focus” of his plans.

Things did not go well when he met with over 100 residents on Aug. 21, 2018, in the park's pavilion.

In fact, things went horribly.

A News-Leader reporter was present and wrote that Derek Lee with Lee Engineering, representing Jenkins, had insisted that people with questions and concerns speak to representatives of the developer in one-on-one conversations.

For a while, people complied. But then the crowd grew restless and began asking for public answers.

“What do you have to hide? Answer our questions,” someone said loudly.

At one point, Jenkins stepped in to address the neighbors.

"We love this community and we love this neighborhood,” he began to say.

One man interjected: “Well, y’all need to leave, we don’t want you here.”

The meeting ended.

More:Developer, Springfield council at odds with Galloway neighbors over proposed historic site

Putting on the brakes

Three months later, City Council said, in essence … Whoa! Let’s slow down!

Growth had come so quickly in Galloway that the city placed a moratorium on future development there.

This froze Jenkins’ request for a zoning change, which he had continued three times as he continued to talk to residents. And it prevented him from joining his four separate parcels into one.

In December 2018, his purchase of the four parcels was completed. It certainly cost him a pretty penny.

And then in March, the Galloway association made a submission to the Landmarks Board to make the building a historic site based primarily on its importance to the community as a gas station and general store.

City ordinance states that if a building is designated as historic, the owner must first get approval from the Landmarks Board for demolition or any exterior alterations that require a building permit. Then it goes to the City Council for an OK.

But the owner can do whatever he or she wants after waiting 60 days.

In other words, if the owner does not want to comply, the city has two months of at least some control over the property. And that's it.

Some say that's a small price to pay to try to ensure the public's interest in trying to preserve historically significant buildings.

In my view, the threshold should be pretty high before any governmental body puts an unwanted "historic" tag of control on private property, even if it's only for 60 days. 

Someone's property oftentimes is someone's lifetime investment.

Jenkins was informed of the nomination for the first time via email by city staff.

He submitted a letter to the Landmarks Board: “It is easy to see that our owner property rights have been negated. The fundamental truth that an individual should have the ability to use and enjoy one’s property has been nullified. We would like to formally state that we do not support or consent to the nomination.”

Jenkins has said publicly that in his opinion, the real goal of the nomination was to oppose and/or delay further development in Galloway.

Not so, say residents, they are focused on trying to protect one of the area's few remaining older buildings.

Do I know what the real purpose was?

Of course not.

But to a layman like me, the bar is set pretty low if that plain-looking, altered building — which I run by about three times a week on the Galloway Trail and never really noticed — is historic enough to in any way infringe on someone else's property rights.

Residents also have the opportunity to create an historic district, a process that would impact not only someone else's property but their own, as well.

In fairness, some of the residents have said they plan to pursue a Galloway historic district.

I don’t live in Galloway and I don’t have fond memories of what it was like in the 1940s, shopping for penny candy in Treadway's General Store.

And, clearly, I don’t think of “historic” in the same sense as Kaitlyn McConnell, a Landmarks Board member who spoke to the council June 3 in support of the recommendation.

“It’s clear that there are a lot of memories that stick out to people and that is something that resonates with a lot of them,” she said. “And I think for them it is more than that it is old. It is what it represents for them.

“When you think of a landmark is it something that is old? Is it something that is architecturally valuable? Or is it something that means something to someone? And I think that is something that is open to interpretation.”

For me, that certainly is enlightening. I mean that.

But it also set me on a new train of thought. It makes me ponder whether it is fair to unilaterally declare a property a historic site because many others have fond memories of it.

When someone  buys a building, who owns the memories?

For example, I like to eat at Anton’s Coffee Shop, which opened 45 years ago.

Does that give me or the hundreds of others who would sign a petition the right to unilaterally submit Anton's building as a historic site once he wants to sell it and/or raze it?

In the end, the Landmarks Board, approved the recommendation for the Galloway building on a 7-0 vote.

The City Council, in turn, voted it down on a 5-4 vote, in large part because the owner was not supportive.

Remember the Train Depot!

Many local historians point to the 1977 demolition of the Frisco Train Depot by the Frisco Railway as perhaps the city’s greatest blunder in not preserving its cultural and architectural history.

The depot was built in 1927 and by all accounts was an architectural gem that most certainly, had it survived, would be a cornerstone for commerce and tourism today.

In Texas in 1835, the rallying cry was “Remember the Alamo!”

Here today among preservationists, it's “Remember the Train Depot!”

But a review of the full history of the train depot has a different lesson for me.

First, the gem of 1927 was built after the existing train station — on the very same spot — was razed. The Frisco Railway promised something bigger, better and new.

So the company tore down an existing train depot, and then delivered on its promises with something spectacular.

Second, what often is missing from the story is that the depot had been vacant and deteriorating for nine years and three months and the city had condemned the building because it was unsafe.

Tell me, what is the real lesson of  "Remember the Train Depot!"?

I think it's that you can’t wait nine years and three months. Should Frisco have waited until the roof collapsed and killed someone?

You have to act much sooner.

Often a difficult question

These have always been difficult questions, says Paden Chambers, another member of the Landmarks Board.

What needs to happen, he says, is to work with owners before the situation reaches a crisis mode.

If a building is truly historic, the discussion should not start the moment a developer buys it or when a demolition permit is issued.

Mike Pentecost now lives and works in Kansas. He is a former chairman of the Springfield Landmarks Board.

“You are constantly fighting that battle of what is good for the city and what is good for that particular property owner,” he says.

He was on the board when the Colonial Hotel, built in 1907 at 205 S. Jefferson Ave., was razed in November 1997. The owner was the Southwest Missouri State Foundation. The building had been vacant for 19 years.

Nineteen years!

There was debate, Pentecost says, but he voted in the Landmarks Board minority regarding the building.

“It needed to come down,” he said. “It was not safe.”

In addition, he says, it’s unusual that the Springfield Landmarks Board does not have an age requirement for historic buildings of, say, 50 years — which is the requirement for the federal historic registry.

What’s the lesson?

To me, once again, don’t wait.

60 days of "cooling off"

I know what you’re thinking.

Oh, Steve, don't you realize that the only thing that a city historic designation does is provide a 60-day “cooling off” period?

In the end, Steve, the property owner can do what he or she desires regarding demotion or alteration.

In theory, this cooling-off period is designed to point out to the owner other options, such as seeking federal tax credits to restore the building. The owner would then have to abide by rules and regulations regarding alterations to the structure.

Also, the 60 days could provide a window for a nonprofit group to make an offer to, perhaps, physically move the structure, which is what happened with Timmons Temple.

In my humble opinion, I think that any “cooling off” period is more likely to be two months of litigation and attempts to shame and pressure the property owner.

And who's to say how quickly an owner, perhaps with health problems after a long and productive business career, needs to act on the building?

Secondly, again in my humble opinion, if the best argument is that “the owner can eventually do what he wants anyway, the requirement really doesn’t amount to much," then why have it?

Let's call it what it is then: "The owners eventually win but we can still annoy you and delay you for 60 days" requirement.

Nevertheless, I support it for one reason only.

Because of what happened with Timmons Temple, which worked out only because there was a cordial and cooperative relationship  — not a hostile one — with the person who signed all those loan documents: the owner of the property.

These are the views of News-Leader columnist Steve Pokin, who has been at the paper seven years, and over his career has covered everything from courts and cops to features and fitness. He can be reached at 417-836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 Boonville Ave., Springfield, MO 65806.