Phoenix’s historic preservation plan is getting a bit of a refresh. The city approved its original one a decade ago, so officials figured it was time to take another look at it — including where preservation in Phoenix has been, where it is and where folks want it to go.
The result is the PreserveHistoricPHX 2025 draft. It’ll soon go to the city’s planning commission and then to the council, potentially by the end of November.
Helana Ruter is the historic preservation officer for the city of Phoenix. She joined The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Helena, how would you describe the goals you and your office are looking for?
HELANA RUTER: Pretty comprehensive. What we did find, even with the consultant coming, so PlaceEconimics, doing those initial focus group studies, is that I guess that the goals from the original plan were so good and kind of comprehensive to begin with that they were still very much relevant today.
So protecting archeological resources, protecting historic resources, developing community awareness — those kinds of goals are evergreen, if you will.
BRODIE: Yeah.
RUTER: But what we realized is that there were kind of some new potential tools and policies that have changed and may help us better accomplish those goals over the next decade.
BRODIE: So the goal of protecting historic buildings or historic archeological sites, how do you actually go about doing that? Because it seems as though that’s a very noble goal. But, you know, the old saw about the devil in the details. How do you go about doing that?
RUTER: We need like a several-hour interview for that one. But the basic founding of the office was to create a historic preservation ordinance. So it’s actually zoning. But the idea was that through overlay zoning, we’d have the opportunity to better protect historic properties.
So when you list a property on the Phoenix Historic Property Register, what you’re actually doing is placing historic preservation overlay zoning on there.
Which means that if you want to demolish the property — hopefully not — or you want to make changes to how it looks on the outside or do new construction, then you come to us first, and then we have kind of a better ability to make sure that changes that are happening are compatible and sensitive.
So that’s one of the things we do under sort of that protection of historic resources. Our archeological resources, it tends to be more on the city administrative side. We try to, as best we can, be physically aware of what is happening with historic and archeological resources.
BRODIE: So does this new plan change any of that? Does it change, for example, if somebody comes to the city and says, “I’d like to get this listed as an historic site,” or “I’d like to make changes to what has already been listed or demolish what has already been listed as an historic site”? Does this plan change what happens next?
RUTER: Not inherently. But so what we have kind of under those main goals are recommendations for things that we can do to better achieve those goals. And one of those concepts is making an update to our chapter eight, the historic preservation ordinance, to see what kinds of things, things that we find as being threats to historic properties, or things like people coming in and making changes without permits or doing demolition without permit.
So how could we potentially look at refining the existing ordinance to better ensure those things don’t happen? Are there additional protections we can provide for archeological resources that aren’t reflected in the ordinance right now?
How can we kind of retool all the ordinance? What improvements can we make? So that then obviously opens up the dialog with the public about what we want to make changes to in the ordinance.
BRODIE: What kinds of policies might come out of this plan? You have these goals that you have outlined. Obviously there might have to be some policy changes to help the city. What it actually does align with those goals.
Do you have a sense, do other folks in the city, have a sense of what other changes might be coming?
RUTER: It’s interesting that the city just adopted its new, broader city plan, plan Phoenix 2025, that was voter adopted.
And so really the goal for planning and development, for the vision for the city is a more connected Phoenix. And our plan builds off of that. We like to very much think that historic preservation plays a critical role in achieving a more connected Phoenix. And the role of our office is to connect us with the past.
So we do, though, outline in this plan how historic preservation contributes to all of the elements of the general plan so that we’re keeping in mind that we’re following, really, the vision of what the city is laying out for how they want to develop in the future.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about the reputation that Phoenix has, at least in some quarters of maybe not being the best at preserving its history and preserving its past. I’m curious, A) what you make of that; and B) if you think that this new plan might assuage some of those concerns.
RUTER: Yeah, it’s interesting. And that’s a question I often ask myself. I was born in Mesa, so I’m not a Phoenician, but close. Phoenician adjacent.
BRODIE: Yeah.
RUTER: So this place obviously has always mattered very much to me. But I do recognize that a lot of the folks come here from other places, and the things that they see is historic, having grown up, are early 1800s or maybe right late 1700.
So it’s kind of easy to come here and be like, “Well, none of that stuff is here, right? Like, does this stuff have kind of relevant significance?” But as a kind of a baseline when you’re looking at historic preservation and historic properties, there’s kind of this benchmark of 50 years to kind of have enough perspective to evaluate.
Like, were there broad things happening that like these properties reflect that significance? And so we’ve got this amazing story of postwar development here. And if we think about this plan going out to 2035, then we’re looking at like a 50-year benchmark of 1985, which is terrifying, I know.
But we have this opportunity now to really sort of celebrate Phoenix’s postwar history, obviously recognizing and continuing to maintain the 19th century resources we do have and our early 20th century history. We have over probably 9,500 properties in our residential historic districts that are designated that do reflect those early 20th century patterns.
But what makes me excited is I feel like we have now this opportunity to tell and celebrate Phoenix’s postwar midcentury heritage.
BRODIE: How do you see this plan playing into what seems like a fairly constant debate in Phoenix between preservation and development — economic and otherwise?
RUTER: Sure. They are not mutually exclusive things. I think historic preservation absolutely recognizes that the goal is never to preserve things in amber. We’re a huge, growing city. I mean, that’s not going to stop. So how do we kind of find that balance between encouraging new development, but holding on to some pieces of the significant past?
So, yeah, I think it’s not always an easy balance to find. But absolutely we’re never anti-development. We’re just always looking for a way to find that balance.
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