In both the Seattle Weekly and the Stranger this month, hundreds of Belltown business owners signed onto an open letter asking our City Council to overrule the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board's decision to designate the 1962 monorail. At a public hearing on July 9th, many people spoke out for and against the ruling, but very few seemed to understand what designation meant, or what the implication of overruling the landmarks board might be.

Strains of common complaints rang through the three minute testimonies. The 1962 monorail is ugly, dangerous, and nobody wants two monorails on Fifth Avenue. Some spoke out in favor of saving the system, or called for staying its demolition until plans for the new monorail are well underway. Some claimed that wealthy Belltown business owners put the monorail on Fifth, and that the current line is illogically twisted at Belltown's northern edge near Seattle Center.

Two long-time landmarks board members, Larry Kreisman and Lorne McConachie explained that the designation did not mean the monorail's pylons were frozen in time, but given overwhelming support for removing the old system's infrastructure, such comments were eclipsed. An explanation of the process could not compete with popular opinion.

But popular misunderstanding of the landmarks designation is fueling near contempt of a process that is one of few mitigating between new monorail construction and our historic urban fabric. Designation is being associated with obstruction, not protection or due process. Few seem to understand that our city's landmarks and districts ALL change to survive. Contrary to some prevailing opinions, the landmarks board is not in the business of making museums, or pickling the city.

To Designate or Not

Throughout the process thus far, the Landmarks Board has treated the 1962 monorail as it would any other resource nominated through the process. They reviewed information submitted by community volunteers, considered how the structure itself embodied the historic significance laid out in the nomination, and voted accordingly. They designated the system, rather than the cars exclusively, because the system could still convey the importance of the whole, and could not be intellectually dissembled into a kit of more or less significant parts.

For more on this discussion, see March and April 2003 articles in this magazine.

Whether or not to recognize that the system met the city's landmarks criteria was a relatively easy decision. The 1962 monorail is one of few iconic structures in the city known by everyone in this city and millions of visitors.

Designation of the system does not mean the 1962 monorail will never change. Designation creates a framework by which knowledgable and/or interested members of the public can engage in discussions around future changes. Designation outlines what aspects of a given resource help convey the significance of the whole. This is useful when altering a building, because designers can use the explanation of importance within their new plans that honor significance and incorporate new programmatic needs.

The landmarks process separates designation from consideration of new use and alterations. Certificates of Approval for changes to designated landmarks involve great and judicious analysis of the many factors affecting a given historic resource.

This built-in flexibility has irritated many preservation advocates because the board often allows some demolition of designated elements. This happened recently at Roosevelt High School, and is generally the case for most historic high school improvement projects. While the historic fabric of public schools is a significant part of the character of these buildings and their surrounding neighborhoods, these schools can be adapted to accommodate current educational practices. Sometimes this means demolition of designated parts.

Allowing demolition of designated elements is not easy for the landmarks board, which is comprised of volunteers who care deeply about our city's historic character. These people are not stern and intractable curators. Board members are lawyers, developers, community activitists, landscape architects, designers, real estate agents, historians, and others whose experience and interest informs balanced decisions.

Popular mischaracterization of the board and its role undermines the process, and ignores the great care with which the board makes very hard decisions. Most everyone engaged in the landmarks process understands that denying any changes to a designated building may discredit the process altogether, and discourage property owners from participating. Preservation, especially in a progressive city like Seattle, has to work within the systems that support economic development, growth, and change to be relevant, otherwise preservation can easily be miscast as a special interest, significant to a handful of snotty whiners.

The Cost of Exemptions

Just last year, City Council considered exempting two city agencies from the landmarks process at another popular landmark site. Post-9/11 fears of bioterrorism accelerated planning for our city's open reservoirs, two of which have great historic importance to our city and the quality of our public spaces.

Volunteer Park, one of many beloved Olmsted designs, was threatened by an exemption that would have capped the water element there with little or no acknowledgement of the park's historic character. The exemption was attached to an ordinance about water rates, and did not make the news.

The small but portentious rider to an otherwise ordinary directive was cut before reaching full Council approval. City Council voted on the water rates issue, and left Volunteer Park planning as is. The Parks Department and Seattle Public Utilities, both stewards of the parks involved, are still held to the same landmarks review as the rest of us. Stewardship of publicly held buildings, like fire stations, schools, libraries, etc. has steadily improved over the years. The Parks Department, for instance, now has a prioritized list of its many landmark or potentially historic holdings scheduled for improvements.

The City of Seattle, which includes the Parks department and others, holds more property in this city than any single entity. A few years ago, the city inventoried its many historic resources which include Seattle Center and the many buildings there. The 228 properties included in this survey are stewarded by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, City Light, the Fire Department and Seattle Public Utilities. And this is an abbreviated inventory.

Exemptions set precedents. Regardless of popular support for new plans, the new monorail will have an impact on our city's urban fabric. This will be considered within the project's Environmental Impact Statement, now nearly complete. The programmatic EIS, crafted before the last vote, did not acknowledge the potential historic significance of the 1962 monorail even as a "head's up" in the analysis. The structure is obviously eligible for local designation.

It is also eligible for the state and national register; the local criteria for designation are very similar to national standards used to determine significance of potentially historic resources. While the state and national registers do not carry the regulatory weight of local designation, omitting the resource and its potential significance from the initial EIS meant both the monorail authority and the general public did not, officially, anticipate this recent controversy.

The EIS review for the new monorail plan is an overarching analysis of many factors. Historic preservation is one of these. The landmarks process is different, and much more specific; it provides a space for public review of changes, disclosure of specific impacts, and is a tried and true method for incorporating the past into new development.

Acknowledging significance does not stifle good design, nor does it unreasonably impede development. Ideally, it informs the designer and the public, and sets the stage for a conversation between the two.

This process is extremely important, and integral to well conceived public projects.

"Every creative act," stated architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, "draws on the past whether it pretends to or not. It draws on what it knows. There is no such thing, really, as a creative act in a vacuum."

View last month's Public Policy article

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