PreserveHistoricPHX 2025 draft<\/a>. It\u2019ll soon go to the city\u2019s planning commission and then to the council, potentially by the end of November.<\/p>\nHelana Ruter is the historic preservation officer for the city of Phoenix. She joined The Show to talk more about it.<\/p>\n
Full conversation <\/p>\n
MARK BRODIE: Helena, how would you describe the goals you and your office are looking for?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
HELANA RUTER:<\/b> 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.<\/p>\n
So protecting archeological resources, protecting historic resources, developing community awareness \u2014 those kinds of goals are evergreen, if you will.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: Yeah.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER:<\/b> 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s a very noble goal. But, you know, the old saw about the devil in the details. How do you go about doing that?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER:<\/b> 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\u2019s actually zoning. But the idea was that through overlay zoning, we\u2019d have the opportunity to better protect historic properties.<\/p>\n
So when you list a property on the Phoenix Historic Property Register, what you\u2019re actually doing is placing historic preservation overlay zoning on there.<\/p>\n
Which means that if you want to demolish the property \u2014 hopefully not \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: So does this new plan change any of that? Does it change, for example, if somebody comes to the city and says, \u201cI\u2019d like to get this listed as an historic site,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019d like to make changes to what has already been listed or demolish what has already been listed as an historic site\u201d? Does this plan change what happens next?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER: <\/b>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.<\/p>\n
So how could we potentially look at refining the existing ordinance to better ensure those things don\u2019t happen? Are there additional protections we can provide for archeological resources that aren\u2019t reflected in the ordinance right now?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Do you have a sense, do other folks in the city, have a sense of what other changes might be coming?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER:<\/b> It\u2019s interesting that the city just adopted its new, broader city plan, plan Phoenix 2025, that was voter adopted.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So we do, though, outline in this plan how historic preservation contributes to all of the elements of the general plan so that we\u2019re keeping in mind that we\u2019re following, really, the vision of what the city is laying out for how they want to develop in the future.<\/p>\n
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\u2019m curious, A) what you make of that; and B) if you think that this new plan might assuage some of those concerns.<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER:<\/b> Yeah, it\u2019s interesting. And that\u2019s a question I often ask myself. I was born in Mesa, so I\u2019m not a Phoenician, but close. Phoenician adjacent.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: Yeah.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER: <\/b>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.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s kind of easy to come here and be like, \u201cWell, none of that stuff is here, right? Like, does this stuff have kind of relevant significance?\u201d But as a kind of a baseline when you\u2019re looking at historic preservation and historic properties, there\u2019s kind of this benchmark of 50 years to kind of have enough perspective to evaluate.<\/p>\n
Like, were there broad things happening that like these properties reflect that significance? And so we\u2019ve got this amazing story of postwar development here. And if we think about this plan going out to 2035, then we\u2019re looking at like a 50-year benchmark of 1985, which is terrifying, I know.<\/p>\n
But we have this opportunity now to really sort of celebrate Phoenix\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But what makes me excited is I feel like we have now this opportunity to tell and celebrate Phoenix\u2019s postwar midcentury heritage.<\/p>\n
BRODIE: How do you see this plan playing into what seems like a fairly constant debate in Phoenix between preservation and development \u2014 economic and otherwise?<\/b><\/p>\n
RUTER: <\/b>Sure. They are not mutually exclusive things. I think historic preservation absolutely recognizes that the goal is never to preserve things in amber. We\u2019re a huge, growing city. I mean, that\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
So, yeah, I think it\u2019s not always an easy balance to find. But absolutely we\u2019re never anti-development. We\u2019re just always looking for a way to find that balance.<\/p>\n
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phoenix\u2019s historic preservation plan is getting a bit of a refresh. The city approved its original one a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-144454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115025825356123173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}