"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."
Comments
This sounds more like...
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
Silly article
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?