Mimi Sheridan, educator, planner, and urbanist, talks about how she came to be a preservationist in Seattle, and what she thinks we need to save the best of Seattle's past.

HM: Could you briefly describe what you do?

MS: Now I'm a consultant on historic preservation projects. I do three major things: survey and inventory work, work on environmental impact statements, and I do special projects, planning, or education, things like that. All involves preservation.

HM: So how has your background led to work on these sorts of projects?

MS: This is like my fourth or fifth career.

I'm from California. I graduated in '73 with my first masters, and then I moved up here.

I was interested in architectural history and design when I first was in college and I took a class many many years ago at UC Santa Barbara in California architectural history. I was a history major, but this was before they had the public history program which started right after I left.

In graduate school at Oregon State, I took a class in the history of higher education which actually involved touring numerous historic buildings in the Willamette Valley related to education.

Then I didn't do anything for many years, and I took a summer class in urban design at the University of Washington in probably the mid 80s.

HM: So your first graduate degree was in education?

MS: Yes, Higher Education Administration. And I worked mostly for City Light doing conservation program planning and research and then I got into doing public involvement. I did public involvement throughout the state, transportation, hazardous waste and planning projects and then that got me interested in planning, and I was really fortunate because the University here has a program that combines planning and urban design and historic preservation which was just what I wanted.

So I got the degree, I graduated exactly 10 years ago, in 1994 with a masters with a historic preservation certificate and virtually an urban design certificate. Mostly, since that time, I've been doing preservation consulting for King County and the City of Seattle and sometimes developers . like I said, I do like special projects because I have this unique combination of the public involvement experience, really heavy public involvement, plus the planning, which not all the people doing preservation have. I'm actually kind of weak on architectural history compared to other people.

The way I really got into the field is through two groups, being active in the Seattle Architectural Foundation and Historic Seattle. I started out as a volunteer and I did years and years of volunteer work, and learned a lot and met a lot of people. That's where I first met Leonard Garfield (now the Executive Director of the Museum of History and Industry). The volunteer work I did for those two organizations taught me a lot about Seattle.

Seattle Preservation: Then and Now

HM: So in your experience, how do you see the field of preservation Seattle changing from when you first became aware of it until now?

MS: I think I first became aware of it about 15 years ago, I would say around 1990. I think it's become broader and more active. There didn't seem to be as much advocacy.

But I missed a lot of things, I was not involved in the theater issues and things like that. I also did my stint at Allied Arts, being on the Board there, it's a huge Board, . lots of people and activities. I think that was a key thing, the theaters and the Music Hall, things like that, I was not involved in those, but I think there is more organized activity now.

The landmarks process seems to be more well known but there's still a long way to go. Right now, it does seem like it sort of peaks and valleys, it relates to development cycles. I've been through several development cycles and there are periods where a lot of things seem to be threatened. That's slowed down lately.

The other thing is that I was really involved in neighborhood planning. As a consultant, I was a consultant to several neighborhoods as a part of the neighborhood planning process. I think that was very important in raising interest in what isn't necessarily called preservation, but in preserving neighborhood character, which is in some sense a code word for preservation and most neighborhoods talked about saving neighborhood character.

I think that was an important factor that hasn't totally be translated, in fact I just read this morning that one of the buildings in the Eastlake neighborhood are planned for redevelopment and demolition. It's that building on the corner of Lynn and Eastlake, the Porto Greek restaurant building. I'm not sure its news. I'm not sure if that's a landmark building, but it's definitely a character building. I think we're really lucky we haven't lost more character buildings than we have.

Hardly anything is landmarked. I think there are no landmarked commercial neighborhood buildings. I can't think of any. Those in districts don't count.

Teaching Practical Preservation

HM: So your background in planning and your interest in education have translated into you teaching people about the process. Is that your focus or are you teaching outside of the process a little bit, into other elements of preservation?

MS: One small thing that I do is teach with Jennifer Meisner the implementation of historic preservation class, a nuts and bolts class -- to teach the process. Leonard's (Leonard Garfield, MOHAI) class really covers the introduction and the basic things, mine covers process. Its pretty broad, it includes regulatory planning, lots of aspects, specific issues in preservation like the recent past, landscape preservation, things like that. My basic theory or approach is that in order to work in the field as a planner, most of these people are planners or architects, you need to understand what a historic resource is, be able to identify it and understand its importance, so that's what we teach. In other words, survey, research things like that.

HM: So your vision for preservation education in this area would be focused on those practical elements .

MS: Well not necessarily. I think the important thing in preservation education is helping people realize what is important to them and their neighborhoods, the character buildings, and how they can be preserved.

I'm not sure that the education in styles and stuff is important unless they're interested. I think that the range of actions they can take is the most important. And for those who are interested . people come at this in different ways.

HM: How do you think the preservation effort in Seattle could be improved?

MS: I think that greater awareness of what we're losing, the changes in character and in greater interest in saving those things, everything comes down to owners . having more awareness and value placed on the character of each neighborhood, how to get owners to change their minds. I think that we can work to save major buildings and have successes there, and we'll have failures too, but that's not the biggest problem.

I think the biggest problem, and the biggest challenge, is saving the buildings that give our neighborhood's character.

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