If you do one thing for preservation today, send Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen an email thanking him for his proposed amendments to Seattle's Comprehensive Plan.

City Council is now going through the public's suggestions for improvements to the plan conceived to lead the city toward a "sustainable future." The 2004 revisions mark the midway point in a twenty-year plan produced in 1994 that charted Seattle's priorities until 2014. Rasmussen, a rookie Councilmember, provided a fantastic set of amendments to the plan that will strengthen preservation planning and action in our city's neighborhoods, shorelines, and downtown.

Preservation's Place in the Current Comprehensive Plan

The Comprehensive Plan is a set of goals and policies governing the city's development in the future. The plan represents much public discussion, and reflects the community's values as articulated in countless hours of public meetings, letters, and other communications. The City of Seattle adopted the first plan in 1994 in response to the state Growth Management Act of 1990, and has been amending the plan regularly in response to ongoing change.

Seattle is a city of neighborhoods -- and the city's 37 neighborhood plans developed in the 1990s are included within the comprehensive plan.

The overarching plan for the city mirrors some of the preservation-friendly sentiments in many of the neighborhood plans. In most of these, neighborhoods considered "preserving community character" a top priority. Character is often synonymous with historic character.

But while general statements about the importance of historic resources are a good start, small tweaks and amendments to this big picture plan slowly but significantly improve the climate for preservation advocacy, action, and rehabilitation projects. The city's landmarks program is only one piece of a system of policies that support preservation in the city -- ideally, the plan for the city should direct any policy or public agency to support preservation.

Rasmussen's proposed amendments targeted a number of sections within the plan that related to the treatment of historic resources. Many of these served to connect historic resources with overarching priorities like conservation of the natural environment and economic development.

What Amendments?

The plan, as is, notes the value of historic resources within the cultural resources element. Rasmussen suggested adding a new goal that supports preservation solutions and the ongoing historic resource survey effort:

"Protect historic resources in Seattle neighborhoods by investigating new tools to encourage their re-use and rehabilitation, by maintaining and updating the City's historic resources survey and inventory, and by working with communities and historic preservation organizations."

In another section of the plan dedicated to "capital facilities," Rasmussen calls for stewardship of city-owned historic properties. The city conducted a survey of these properties in 2001.

Other suggestions included:

"Incorporate sustainability principles and practices, including protection of historic resources, into the design, rehabilitation, and construction of City buildings and other types of capital facilities."

"Consider social health in capital facilities development, including protection of worker health, improved indoor environmental quality, protection of historic resources, and access to alternative transportation modes (e.g. public transit, bicycling, walking, etc.) and social services."

"Amend the Capital Facilities Appendices to add information from the database of city historic resources to the inventory of existing capital facilities."

Rasmussen's recommendations for the comp plan element concerning Seattle's economic development recognize the importance of historic places to downtown's bottom line. Specifically, his amendments point to Pike Place Market's and Pioneer Square's place in local tourism, and that the economic benefits of these districts should warrant their continued protection.

More holistically, he recommends the city "strive to maintain the economic health and importance of downtown as the economic center of the City and the region and home to many of Seattle's vital professional service firms, high technology companies, regional retail activity, as well as cultural, historic, entertainment, convention and tourist facilities."

In addition, he asks that the City "use cultural resources, such as public art and historic resources, as a tool for stimulating economic development in Seattle's neighborhoods, as these resources provide attractions that can draw people to and enhance public perception of an area."

The "neighborhood planning element," which is divided up into many subsections on the Department of Planning and Development's website is focused on a number of neighborhoods targeted as "urban villages." These are commercial hubs located near primary intersections in neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill and the Central District.

Rasmussen recommended the City "support and encourage the incorporation of cultural elements, such as public art and historic resources, in the implementation of neighborhood plans. In future planning efforts, include a broad range of creative skills to improve the value of the neighborhood projects."

Within the comp plan's "Land Use Element"Part I and Part II, Rasmussen suggested a few tweaks that strengthened the City's support for the adaptive reuse of historic districts and landmarks, and the creation of more landmark districts. These "encourage stability, rehabilitation, restoration, and planned development."

Other changes in this element support creating design guidelines within designated historic districts.

Rasmussen also suggested adding historic building preservation as a means of improving the City's environmental performance.

But Wait, There's More

Historic Seattle enthusiastically supported all these amendments, and made a few suggestions of its own related to chronic preservation issues.

We're seeing the demolition of "character buildings" along commercial streets and arterials within neighborhood centers. This appears to relate to zoning that supports maximizing development envelopes along these corridors. Though preservation of historic commercial buildings along these corridors might be implied by current language, we felt a clear directive within the comprehensive plan may help support conservation of unique streetscapes critical to neighborhood and city character.

We recommended changing comp plan language related to "preservation of development having historic, architectural or social significance within centers and villages" to "preservation of development having historic, architectural or social significance within centers and villages and along primary commercial corridors with high concentrations of historic resources."

Given that the Landmarks Board and Landmarks staff review designs adjacent to historic buildings, Design Review (in downtown) has not always considered the relationship between new and historic buildings. We recommended that design reviewers be directed to consider the relationship between new and old.

Also, we noted the importance of Seattle's maritime history. While building preservation is becoming stronger and more conventionalized within the City of Seattle, preservation of maritime heritage has not advanced to the same degree. Lake Union has become a center for maritime preservation activity and plans. Preservation of historic vessels provides a great learning opportunity -- appropriately located on Lake Union. This is a water-dependent business, and given its close proximity to downtown and new development in the South Lake Union neighborhood, could see significant growth, and should be integrated into comprehensive plans for the neighborhood and city.

So be sure to send Councilmember Rasmussen a big thank you when you get a chance. We need more leadership like his in the years ahead.

View last month's Public Policy article

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