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Historic Preservation vs. Revitalization?

Posted by: Tim Halbur

14 December 2009 - 12:00pm

In Willmar, Minnesota, city officials were not pleased when a mandated environmental review concluded that the 68-year old airport building they wanted to demolish was historically significant.

"City Administrator Michael Schmit says the city has offered to 'carve out' the 4.5-acre terminal site to allow the city to move forward with developing the remaining 700 acres of the old airport into an industrial park. But he says the FAA has not responded to the offer.

In an effort to bring the land release issue to a conclusion, the city has told the FAA that the city is willing to enter into a preservation easement for the terminal building."

Full Story: City of Willmar continues working on land release process for former municipal airport
Source: West Central Tribune, December 14, 2009
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Silly article

Submitted by leslieolson on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 14:20.

C'mon guys. The articles mentions about 1% of the total acreage as needed to be set aside in a preservation easement. This is not a preservation vs revitalization article.
Historic preservation can nearly always be a key ingredient IN revitalization. The key is having problem-solving, out of the box-thinking staff who understand preservation, good design, and development. This is not rocket science.
The real problem lies in people who are all about process and not thinking about how to integrate the two concepts into a win-win end product. Now THATS an article. But isn't that the issue in all related fields as well? Planning? Design Review?

This sounds more like...

Submitted by UrbanMechanic on Tue, 12/15/2009 - 02:15.

This doesn't much sound like preservation vs. revitalization battle at all. It sounds like process. Not very sensational for headlines but from what's quoted here it would seem that everything is in the works. As for the portion of the airport to be preserved...my guess is that there are wide-range of developers (for profit and non-profit) that could tackle the task of dealing with that. Shoot, anyone who could pull a few articles and make a few phone-calls (i.e. National Trust, State Preservation Office, local historic society) could get that process started.

So it goes.

http://www.urbanmechanic.com

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"It's so out of control," said Duany, referring to the current state of public participation in planning decisions in the United States. "It's an absolute orgy of public process… basically, we can't get anything done."
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