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Demolished: 509 & 517 Louisiana St.


Urbannizer

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The problem is as Houstonians we gave heard the it will only be a parking lot for a while excuse, that how we ended up with so many...because big plans for the lot fell thru...the 80,s spear head that so many building torn down for future building that never came to be

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Look, the Lancaster family owns the buildings and can do what they want with him. We understand that. The reason we are voicing our concerns is so many historic structures and old buildings get torn down in this city. We aren't trying to force the family to spend money to renovate the buildings. We are just trying to see if there's another way that they can have their parking situation fixed. Why tear down 100 year old buildings for 50 parking spaces if there could be another alternative? There is a ton of construction going on downtown and will so in the future and more and more parking lots are disappearing making parking a premium, so will we just keep tearing other buildings down because we need parking? 

 

But I guess since none of us are spending any of our own money to go toward the buildings we should just shut up and not have any opinions or thoughts on the matter....

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How much of your money are you willing to give to the owners to rehab the buildings? Or, do you just want to use the police power of the City to force the owners to spend the money to satisfy your aesthetic values?

I use my own money to preserve my own historic building. And I believe they should do the same or sell.

It's about preserving history. That's why there are protected landmarks. Unfortunately not everything of value is protected yet.

As for your asinine 'aesthetic argument', I won't comment. There is plenty opportunity left in the city to build. Not everything is built to last, but some have survived 100+ years. And I believe that value cannot be recreated. Time to start protecting these structures - we have so few left.

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Look, the Lancaster family owns the buildings and can do what they want with him. We understand that. The reason we are voicing our concerns is so many historic structures and old buildings get torn down in this city. We aren't trying to force the family to spend money to renovate the buildings. We are just trying to see if there's another way that they can have their parking situation fixed. Why tear down 100 year old buildings for 50 parking spaces if there could be another alternative? There is a ton of construction going on downtown and will so in the future and more and more parking lots are disappearing making parking a premium, so will we just keep tearing other buildings down because we need parking? 

 

But I guess since none of us are spending any of our own money to go toward the buildings we should just shut up and not have any opinions or thoughts on the matter....

 

Excellent points. There are plenty of historic structures downtown that we don't think are at risk because they appear to be in good shape and are being used for residences or businesses. But these old buildings require a lot of maintenance and up keep. They aren't made from steel, they are made from brick and stone and degenerate over time. What's to say 5 years from now the Aris won't decide it needs more surface parking and start purchasing and demolishing buildings around market square. It could happen as easily as this.

 

And they'll say the same thing they always say: the buildings weren't structurally sound, and we'll say the same thing: they can do what they want, we can't force them to do anything. We have to start valuing these structures beyond the surface lots they sit on. Somehow, every other city in the US seems to get this but us. 

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I think there is value in them. What do all these little suburban town squares try to recreate? These exact buildings they plan to demolish. They add interest and charm. Who wants to explore a part of town surrounded by surface lots and parking garages? We save so little of our history, there's only a small percentage left. We just need more time for Downtown to have more residents to make these properties more valuable and worth saving. Even just a year or two...

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I use my own money to preserve my own historic building. And I believe they should do the same or sell.

It's about preserving history. That's why there are protected landmarks. Unfortunately not everything of value is protected yet.

As for your asinine 'aesthetic argument', I won't comment. There is plenty opportunity left in the city to build. Not everything is built to last, but some have survived 100+ years. And I believe that value cannot be recreated. Time to start protecting these structures - we have so few left.

 

Attempting to persuade the current or perhaps a prospective new owner is fine, but "of value" is entirely subjective, and in this case expressly aesthetic.  

 

Writing emails to politicians at the 11th hour to stop someone else's investment plans is a step beyond expressing your belief, presuming it works at all.  Did anyone here attempt to raise funds to save these structures? Did they organize like minded folks to identify those that may be threatened and talk to owners?  What would anyone have done to protect these specific buildings apart from call on powerful people to stop the owners from doing what they want with their property?  No one on this forum mentioned their existence at all before their demolition was announced that I can find.  When BB's moved in, there wasn't even a mention of the building outside of the address.  When they moved out, no one noticed at all.

 

There is a contrary argument here that many on this board dismiss under cover of the moral supremacy of wanting to preserve old buildings regardless of the cost.  Many old buildings have been preserved lately, and I think that is great. There are dozens more downtown sitting empty just waiting for the value you describe to manifest in one way or another. Sometimes they rot away before that value shows up, which is unfortunate.

 

The "value" of one brick stacked on another 100 years ago is what someone will pay for it.   If someone said they were built in the 1930's would you care, what about the 40's or 50's? Some buildings will last 20 but not 25, some 100 but not 105. Would you press the owner of the 20 year building to make it last 40 or sell out? If not, what age limitation do you have in mind and where is it codified so that people understand what options they have when making million dollar investment decisions?  These are the questions that you are calling asinine.

 

Permanent museums require wealthy benefactors, and none were interested enough in these two somewhat interesting looking, but currently useless brick boxes in time to save them. Capricious political intervention is indeed something that every other city does with more regularity than Houston, I happen to like that about this place.  

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Not a bad argument Nate. But losing these buildings will change the 'sight and scene' of the area. Currently it brings us back to a Houston that was. Having historical reminders has a value that I wish more people realized. Houston has lost so many iconic buildings. If we had tons left,

Losing these 2 could be tolerable. Since we have 3% of downtown buildings 80 years old or older, these buildings have an increased need.

I will fight to save these or any historic building. Because I believe Houston needs them. Those who share my opinion / appreciation / respect, please join me.

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Not a bad argument Nate. But losing these buildings will change the 'sight and scene' of the area. Currently it brings us back to a Houston that was. Having historical reminders has a value that I wish more people realized. Houston has lost so many iconic buildings. If we had tons left,

Losing these 2 could be tolerable. Since we have 3% of downtown buildings 80 years old or older, these buildings have an increased need.

I will fight to save these or any historic building. Because I believe Houston needs them. Those who share my opinion / appreciation / respect, please join me.

 

Fair enough. I likewise hope that people see more value in understandable and consistent property rights.  There is a balance there that can meet both desires, but it won't be costless.

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http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/100-year-old-downtown-buildings-to-make-way-for-6708623.php?t=d37d1b31d5&cmpid=twitter-premium

 

You know how sometimes when you stay at a hotel in a city like New Orleans or San Antonio and sometimes you have to park your car down the street or give it to a valet because the neighborhood is tight for parking? Hotels in Houston can't be bothered to deal with this.

 

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Attempting to persuade the current or perhaps a prospective new owner is fine, but "of value" is entirely subjective, and in this case expressly aesthetic.  

 

Writing emails to politicians at the 11th hour to stop someone else's investment plans is a step beyond expressing your belief, presuming it works at all.  Did anyone here attempt to raise funds to save these structures? Did they organize like minded folks to identify those that may be threatened and talk to owners?  What would anyone have done to protect these specific buildings apart from call on powerful people to stop the owners from doing what they want with their property?  No one on this forum mentioned their existence at all before their demolition was announced that I can find.  When BB's moved in, there wasn't even a mention of the building outside of the address.  When they moved out, no one noticed at all.

 

There is a contrary argument here that many on this board dismiss under cover of the moral supremacy of wanting to preserve old buildings regardless of the cost.  Many old buildings have been preserved lately, and I think that is great. There are dozens more downtown sitting empty just waiting for the value you describe to manifest in one way or another. Sometimes they rot away before that value shows up, which is unfortunate.

 

The "value" of one brick stacked on another 100 years ago is what someone will pay for it.   If someone said they were built in the 1930's would you care, what about the 40's or 50's? Some buildings will last 20 but not 25, some 100 but not 105. Would you press the owner of the 20 year building to make it last 40 or sell out? If not, what age limitation do you have in mind and where is it codified so that people understand what options they have when making million dollar investment decisions?  These are the questions that you are calling asinine.

 

Permanent museums require wealthy benefactors, and none were interested enough in these two somewhat interesting looking, but currently useless brick boxes in time to save them. Capricious political intervention is indeed something that every other city does with more regularity than Houston, I happen to like that about this place.  

 

With all due respect Nate, I do notice and have often noticed these buildings for a long time. I've always admired them because unlike 99.9% of buildings in Houston, they have character. The thing about these demolitions is that they're announced right before they happen. The owners know there will be a backlash and move quickly before anyone has a chance to oppose it or they get too much bad press. 

 

At the end of the day, this is a forum about architecture. If I want to read about "value", or investment decisions, I'll read the Economist. Houston only sees value as dollars. What about cultural value, aesthetic value? I don't see why caring about these buildings makes us hypocrites or as exercising some sort of moral supremacy. It's about caring for things that have passed down to our generation and preserving them for future generations once we're all gone. 

 

I'm also tired of this notion that we're not allowed to criticize because we're not willing to put up our own money to save them. As if that is an actual valid argument or has anything to do with what we're talking about.

 

This does make me grateful for the buildings that were saved and found new life, like the Cheek Neal building. Who would have thought that building could have been saved? Talk about structurally unsound. But ultimately the time will come for all these buildings. Every historic building in Houston is a risk, if not now, then in 5 or 10 years. 

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With all due respect Nate, I do notice and have often noticed these buildings for a long time. I've always admired them because unlike 99.9% of buildings in Houston, they have character. The thing about these demolitions is that they're announced right before they happen. The owners know there will be a backlash and move quickly before anyone has a chance to oppose it or they get too much bad press. 

 

At the end of the day, this is a forum about architecture. If I want to read about "value", or investment decisions, I'll read the Economist. Houston only sees value as dollars. What about cultural value, aesthetic value? I don't see why caring about these buildings makes us hypocrites or as exercising some sort of moral supremacy. It's about caring for things that have passed down to our generation and preserving them for future generations once we're all gone. 

 

I'm also tired of this notion that we're not allowed to criticize because we're not willing to put up our own money to save them. As if that is an actual valid argument or has anything to do with what we're talking about.

 

This does make me grateful for the buildings that were saved and found new life, like the Cheek Neal building. Who would have thought that building could have been saved? Talk about structurally unsound. But ultimately the time will come for all these buildings. Every historic building in Houston is a risk, if not now, then in 5 or 10 years. 

 

Likely responses to your eloquent post:

 

1. Character is subjective. Someone else might think the parking lot will have more character. Who are you to say that parking lots don't have character?

 

2. It's fine to care about and value things, but you have to show that care with money. Care and value only mean something when they translate into dollars.

 

3. Yes, you are exercising moral supremacy. You're wanting to use your subjective concerns to control somebody else's decisions. Just like those moral supremacists who turned the Grand Canyon into a park and killed all the development lining it, or who took the businesses out of the Alamo and made it a historic site.

 

4. Be happy about all the historic buildings we've saved lately. Most of the buildings that have made news in the past ten years were renovations that saved them. Only some were torn down. Just think, if we save 80% of our old buildings every decade, then in five decades, we'll only have 33% of our old buildings left. But think of all the parking we'll have!

 

And who's to say that that will be any worse?

 

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2. It's fine to care about and value things, but you have to show that care with money. Care and value only mean something when they translate into dollars.

I understand this stance because you can hope and wish for hungry children to get fed, but until you put your money where your mouth is, you're not really helping the cause. (I know it's a different subject and no way am I comparing starving children to cute buildings facing the wrecking ball). But I makes sense.

 

That's why I think there should be some city incentives to save/refurbish/rehab/renovate/reuse buildings like this. I would go so far as to even say to save the facade of 800 Bell. It's history repeating itself (806 Main). That way, there are no laws or ordinances against destroying older buildings (so the free market posters with nothing but dollar signs in their eyes can finally shut up), but incentives to make the saving of such structures financially feasible (and equally those of us who want our city to save what it can to move on to other issues).

 

I don't think reaching out to the Lancaster is the right way to do this. We should be writing City Hall. I know it won't stop everything from being demolished, but definitely a step in the right direction.

 

Anyways, just an idea so both sides get something out of it.

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I understand this stance because you can hope and wish for hungry children to get fed, but until you put your money where your mouth is, you're not really helping the cause. (I know it's a different subject and no way am I comparing starving children to cute buildings facing the wrecking ball). But I makes sense.

 

That's why I think there should be some city incentives to save/refurbish/rehab/renovate/reuse buildings like this. I would go so far as to even say to save the facade of 800 Bell. It's history repeating itself (806 Main). That way, there are no laws or ordinances against destroying older buildings (so the free market posters with nothing but dollar signs in their eyes can finally shut up), but incentives to make the saving of such structures financially feasible (and equally those of us who want our city to save what it can to move on to other issues).

 

I don't think reaching out to the Lancaster is the right way to do this. We should be writing City Hall. I know it won't stop everything from being demolished, but definitely a step in the right direction.

 

Anyways, just an idea so both sides get something out of it.

 

That's true to a point, but for instance, if we had waited for the people who like national parks to put up the money to buy the land, we wouldn't have any national parks. In countries like Mexico, the tops of the mountains are owned by the wealthy. You go hiking and you come to a fence and have to turn around. Rich people don't have much incentive to pay for public lands when they can just buy the land they want, and poor people can't afford to buy it. So the government must use its power to stand up for the values of the community and say, "This shall be preserved." Which is exactly what Teddy Roosevelt did in numerous executive actions to save places such as the Grand Canyon.

 

Its similar with historic preservation. The developer who wanted to put a skyscraper through the lobby of Grand Central in the 70's said the city owed him $250 million for the profit he lost in not building it. Of course, we cannot expect cities to pay developers for unbuilt buildings. Luckily the city got its way and Grand Central was saved. But don't forget: if it were all just left to money and the decisions of property owners, we would not have Grand Central station anymore, or countless other historical treasures.

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Getting the city Government involved is where it gets tricky. It can hurt future developments downtown if the city is perceived as being too heavy handed. My biggest problem here is trying to understand how people can rationalize decisions like this. I guess they try to depersonalize the decision by citing costs, or their commitment to other historic structures in the past, but at the end of the day what happens here is on them.

 

If keeping the buildings up to code is costing too much, would they consider selling? Or do the 50 parking spaces provide a better financial outcome? Maybe they have tried to sell, but potential buyers were turned off by the rehabilitation costs? Downtown is booming now and there is a huge amount of interest in restoring old structures. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't get some offers. 

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With all due respect Nate, I do notice and have often noticed these buildings for a long time. I've always admired them because unlike 99.9% of buildings in Houston, they have character. The thing about these demolitions is that they're announced right before they happen. The owners know there will be a backlash and move quickly before anyone has a chance to oppose it or they get too much bad press. 

 

At the end of the day, this is a forum about architecture. If I want to read about "value", or investment decisions, I'll read the Economist. Houston only sees value as dollars. What about cultural value, aesthetic value? I don't see why caring about these buildings makes us hypocrites or as exercising some sort of moral supremacy. It's about caring for things that have passed down to our generation and preserving them for future generations once we're all gone. 

 

I'm also tired of this notion that we're not allowed to criticize because we're not willing to put up our own money to save them. As if that is an actual valid argument or has anything to do with what we're talking about.

 

This does make me grateful for the buildings that were saved and found new life, like the Cheek Neal building. Who would have thought that building could have been saved? Talk about structurally unsound. But ultimately the time will come for all these buildings. Every historic building in Houston is a risk, if not now, then in 5 or 10 years. 

 

You may have noticed them, but they were not worthy of discussion at all on a locally focused "forum about architecture" that has been around for quite some time now.  If they were so rare as to be inherently valuable, I would expect to see some evidence of appreciation of them somewhere.  If that appreciation is limited to a "hey that's pretty cool" thought in someone's (or many someones) head, at what point is that worth taking away property rights? We don't have to answer that question the same way.

 

The moral supremacy I inferred came from the impulse to involve politicians and the use of the word "asinine". One may value things differently, but that doesn't make them foolish and worthy of immediate dismissal. You used the term "aesthetic" yourself, which encapsulates the experience of being in the presence of historical stuff and having some non-academic appreciation for it pretty accurately.  When that term was used by someone that disagrees with your position, it was met with a "your argument is not worthy of addressing" response. 

 

My disagreement with your criticism has absolutely nothing to do with your being allowed to be critical. I have no such notion or power to enforce it if I did. It is your right to be critical, and indeed this seems the place for such discussions. If this is to be exclusively a forum for strict preservationists, then I suppose my hours here may be numbered.  Your positions have tradeoffs, as do my own, pointing them out is not shouting anyone down.

 

Regulation is sufficiently broad in scope that pretty much anything can be stopped for one reason or another with a legal pretense, but deploying that power capriciously has a cost. 

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Likely responses to your eloquent post:

 

1. Character is subjective. Someone else might think the parking lot will have more character. Who are you to say that parking lots don't have character?

 

2. It's fine to care about and value things, but you have to show that care with money. Care and value only mean something when they translate into dollars.

 

3. Yes, you are exercising moral supremacy. You're wanting to use your subjective concerns to control somebody else's decisions. Just like those moral supremacists who turned the Grand Canyon into a park and killed all the development lining it, or who took the businesses out of the Alamo and made it a historic site.

 

4. Be happy about all the historic buildings we've saved lately. Most of the buildings that have made news in the past ten years were renovations that saved them. Only some were torn down. Just think, if we save 80% of our old buildings every decade, then in five decades, we'll only have 33% of our old buildings left. But think of all the parking we'll have!

 

And who's to say that that will be any worse?

 

 

Answer these questions, asked earlier:

 

1. If they were built in the 1930's would you care, what about the 40's or 50's? 

2. Would you press the owner of the 20 year building to make it last 40 or sell out?

3. If not, what age limitation do you have in mind and where is it codified so that people understand what options they have when making million dollar investment decisions?

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EDITED to remove perpetuation of needless confrontation.

 

Answer these questions, asked earlier:

 

1. If they were built in the 1930's would you care, what about the 40's or 50's? 

2. Would you press the owner of the 20 year building to make it last 40 or sell out?

3. If not, what age limitation do you have in mind and where is it codified so that people understand what options they have when making million dollar investment decisions?

 

 

I understand you want things codified. With historical buildings, there are basically two dimensions to their value. The first is the value of the building simply as history - as a reminder of the city's past. For this, the value generally increases the older the building is, jumping more dramatically upward as it reaches a time period where there are few buildings (e.g., if Houston only has three buildings left from before the Civil War, those are dramatically more precious than buildings built after the Civil War).

 

The second is the architectural character of the building. This is based on the widespread observation that buildings built before around 1930 were oriented more towards pedestrians, with architecture designed to make them interesting and inviting to passersby. After 1930, they start gradually ignoring pedestrians, and the downtown built environment becomes more forbidding (this is why a walk along Congress or Prairie streets is for most people more pleasant than a walk along Walker or McKinney streets). So for people who want downtown to continue to be an inviting, pleasant place, there is an interest in preserving buildings that have that earlier character. Otherwise the historic district starts to increasingly look like the more southern parts of downtown, and downtown loses its soul.

 

If you want codification, all of this can be codified in a landmarks ordinance, as it is in other cities. I don't expect it will stop investment, since we're the only city that doesn't have a strong landmarks ordinance.

 

And if you think all this sounds subjective, I would invite you to take friends from out of town for a walk downtown and ask them which part of downtown they found the most interesting. I would bet the majority of them say the northern/historic end. It's not just an opinion if everyone or most people hold the same opinion. But the character of the area won't last if all the little old buildings keep getting replaced with parking lots.

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And now that I've answered your points, why don't you answer mine. I've mentioned the Grand Canyon and Grand Central Station as two landmarks that would have been lost or badly disfigured if government power hadn't trammeled over property rights. Do you disagree that in these cases, government power should have intervened? Should it have been left to private owners' decisions?

 

Before you say, "Well those are much more important than these little buildings that no one ever talked about," keep in mind that (a.) your argument against preservation rests on principles that can apply just as well to the Grand Canyon and Grand Central, and (b.) it's not just major landmarks that are worth preserving, but the character of areas that is made up of lots of little contributing landmarks. There is no single great landmark that makes the French Quarter what it is, it's all the little average quaint old buildings that collectively make it a treasure.

 

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You may have noticed them, but they were not worthy of discussion at all on a locally focused "forum about architecture" that has been around for quite some time now.  If they were so rare as to be inherently valuable, I would expect to see some evidence of appreciation of them somewhere.  If that appreciation is limited to a "hey that's pretty cool" thought in someone's (or many someones) head, at what point is that worth taking away property rights? We don't have to answer that question the same way. - I don't understand this urge to quantify everything. Like if we had expressed appreciation on the forum x number of times for these buildings, then our argument would be valid. 

 

The moral supremacy I inferred came from the impulse to involve politicians and the use of the word "asinine". One may value things differently, but that doesn't make them foolish and worthy of immediate dismissal. You used the term "aesthetic" yourself, which encapsulates the experience of being in the presence of historical stuff and having some non-academic appreciation for it pretty accurately.  When that term was used by someone that disagrees with your position, it was met with a "your argument is not worthy of addressing" response. - fair enough. My comments were meant to refute what I saw as a pervasive argument by some on this thread that at the end of the day this is a financial decision, and there was no broader discourse to be had. I wanted to point out that there has to be something more, assuming most of us here love great (or even pretty good) architecture. I didn't see where spending my own money was a prerequisite to having an opinion on this. 

 

My disagreement with your criticism has absolutely nothing to do with your being allowed to be critical. I have no such notion or power to enforce it if I did. It is your right to be critical, and indeed this seems the place for such discussions. If this is to be exclusively a forum for strict preservationists, then I suppose my hours here may be numbered.  Your positions have tradeoffs, as do my own, pointing them out is not shouting anyone down. - It's not for strict preservationists, but it's certainly not for people solely interested in reducing everything to a financial transaction.

 

Regulation is sufficiently broad in scope that pretty much anything can be stopped for one reason or another with a legal pretense, but deploying that power capriciously has a cost. I've addressed this earlier and agree. This would not be my preferred approach. 

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And now that I've answered your points, why don't you answer mine. I've mentioned the Grand Canyon and Grand Central Station as two landmarks that would have been lost or badly disfigured if government power hadn't trammeled over property rights. Do you disagree that in these cases, government power should have intervened? Should it have been left to private owners' decisions?

 

Before you say, "Well those are much more important than these little buildings that no one ever talked about," keep in mind that (a.) your argument against preservation rests on principles that can apply just as well to the Grand Canyon and Grand Central, and (b.) it's not just major landmarks that are worth preserving, but the character of areas that is made up of lots of little contributing landmarks. There is no single great landmark that makes the French Quarter what it is, it's all the little average quaint old buildings that collectively make it a treasure.

 

I'm unfamiliar with the particulars of the Grand Canyon case that you cite. I was under the impression that it was always federal land, but I could be wrong there. From a short read it looks like the vast majority always was with some mix of legitimate and otherwise land claims for mining operations but not outright ownership. Again, not knowing what is particularly at issue, the rights conveyed or purchased should be honored, if after the fact the feds decided that they granted land to someone that looked a whole lot more interesting than they thought it did, such is the price the public pays for putting inattentive bureaucrats and politicians in charge of such things in the first place. Change the laws prospectively through the political process and/or buy the rights back and move on.  The Alamo is a good example of how to handle it. Its rights were repurchased and it was placed into trust.

 

Grand Central Station went all the way to the Supreme Court and was a pretty interesting and complicated set of arguments. The "taking" at question was the rights to build a tower on top of it that it was designed to accommodate from the get go (with some dispute around the particulars) and involved the status of railroad that owned it as a regulated utility. It was a public space, but a privately owned building.  Around the time the owner was losing the case, it went bankrupt and the place was in disrepair for decades before being renovated at public expense.  Its owner's business model was pretty much doomed at the time of the proposed redevelopment, so that particular taking ended up a no harm/no foul, unless you were their lenders and could have some prime midtown real estate to offset your loan losses, which would have been their assumption in making the loans.  I think private property rights are more important than that particular court did, so to answer your question directly, I would let a private owner tear down anything that they own, including Grand Central Station if there were no laws preventing them from doing so when they bought it or built it. 

 

Let the owner deal with the fallout if it is publicly unpopular; that has to be in the value equation for anything like this. I'd give the Lancaster folks credit for saving the hotel, it could have been the Montagu.  You evidently wouldn't give them preservation equity to offset the loss of these two, that's fine. I'll defend them for what that's worth (nothing).

 

I mostly care about the codification and people being able to do what the law says they can. If people can plan on that, we can change the laws to be more or less restrictive as our priorities change through the political process and we get the benefits and pay the costs thereof.  People can pick the cities that work best for the way they want to live that way.

 

There will be all varieties of restrictive ordinances, and as you point out, we don't have much of one that applies to protect the buildings in this case. If political pressure was applied and it worked in this case in place of an ordinance that people wished to exist, I'd be very much against my city operating in such that way. Were the shoe on the other foot and I were a developer, I'd not try to circumvent a particular set of restrictions if they were the law because I preferred to do something else.  I'd spend my money elsewhere if I could. Problem is, many get into politics and real estate development expressly to be able to get the cream off the top on deals just like that.  

 

A follow up question though, the building that was demolished to construct the current Grand Central terminal was pretty interesting, what would you have had them do with it?

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LOL at the structural integrity of the buildings argument.

 

I am an investor in BBs. Our third location went into that spot. While it was our only unsuccessful location to date, it had nothing to do with the building. The building was fine. We had no problems obtaining permits and building out. So, either the family is lying or something really, really bad has happened in the last 2 years that nobody knows about...

 

Also, ANY building can be saved if you want it badly enough. At the end of the day, this family is making an economic decision. They are tearing down historic buildings and a fairly famous tree and replacing it with surface parking so dinner patrons don't have to wait 3 minutes for their car to be pulled around. That is their right. It is also might right to call them out on it and to avoid every giving another $ to the Lancaster or the bistro. 

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Re: quantification.

 

If something goes unmentioned in a group of passionately like minded individuals that you typically discuss exactly this kind of thing with, I'm going to conclude it wasn't that big of a deal to begin with. Not talking number of times, I'm talking being mentioned at all.  The Montagu, Hogan Allnoch, the Ben Milam, Texas tower and many others were discussed prior to demolition. These two were not.  

 

Coverage here is a way to see who cared about these places, but by no means would it be exhaustive.

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I'm unfamiliar with the particulars of the Grand Canyon case that you cite. I was under the impression that it was always federal land, but I could be wrong there. From a short read it looks like the vast majority always was with some mix of legitimate and otherwise land claims for mining operations but not outright ownership. Again, not knowing what is particularly at issue, the rights conveyed or purchased should be honored, if after the fact the feds decided that they granted land to someone that looked a whole lot more interesting than they thought it did, such is the price the public pays for putting inattentive bureaucrats and politicians in charge of such things in the first place. Change the laws prospectively through the political process and/or buy the rights back and move on.  The Alamo is a good example of how to handle it. Its rights were repurchased and it was placed into trust.

 

Grand Central Station went all the way to the Supreme Court and was a pretty interesting and complicated set of arguments. The "taking" at question was the rights to build a tower on top of it that it was designed to accommodate from the get go (with some dispute around the particulars) and involved the status of railroad that owned it as a regulated utility. It was a public space, but a privately owned building.  Around the time the owner was losing the case, it went bankrupt and the place was in disrepair for decades before being renovated at public expense.  Its owner's business model was pretty much doomed at the time of the proposed redevelopment, so that particular taking ended up a no harm/no foul, unless you were their lenders and could have some prime midtown real estate to offset your loan losses, which would have been their assumption in making the loans.  I think private property rights are more important than that particular court did, so to answer your question directly, I would let a private owner tear down anything that they own, including Grand Central Station if there were no laws preventing them from doing so when they bought it or built it. 

 

Let the owner deal with the fallout if it is publicly unpopular; that has to be in the value equation for anything like this. I'd give the Lancaster folks credit for saving the hotel, it could have been the Montagu.  You evidently wouldn't give them preservation equity to offset the loss of these two, that's fine. I'll defend them for what that's worth (nothing).

 

I mostly care about the codification and people being able to do what the law says they can. If people can plan on that, we can change the laws to be more or less restrictive as our priorities change through the political process and we get the benefits and pay the costs thereof.  People can pick the cities that work best for the way they want to live that way.

 

There will be all varieties of restrictive ordinances, and as you point out, we don't have much of one that applies to protect the buildings in this case. If political pressure was applied and it worked in this case in place of an ordinance that people wished to exist, I'd be very much against my city operating in such that way. Were the shoe on the other foot and I were a developer, I'd not try to circumvent a particular set of restrictions if they were the law because I preferred to do something else.  I'd spend my money elsewhere if I could. Problem is, many get into politics and real estate development expressly to be able to get the cream off the top on deals just like that.  

 

A follow up question though, the building that was demolished to construct the current Grand Central terminal was pretty interesting, what would you have had them do with it?

 

So you would've let Grand Central go. Very interesting. And the Grand Canyon too, to the extent that there were private claims on the land (clifftop hotels and such, which there were).

 

Don't see why in principle you wouldn't want to live/do business in a city with historic preservation laws, considering that almost every city in the western world has them. I find that with free market/property rights advocates such as yourself, nothing is acceptable short of 100% purity. I tend to see it more in the Aristotelian sense of, "a virtue is always between two vices." The one vice being, an overly restricted and govt. controlled city where individual initiative is stifled, and the other vice being a chaotic free for all where the public has no collective input and any person rich and powerful enough can do anything. The virtuous position is between the two.

 

As to the building that preceded Grand Central, it wasn't near the landmark that Grand Central is. If that building were in downtown Houston today, I'd say preserve at almost any cost. In New York in 1912, there were many buildings that looked like that. Also, some of your history is wrong - Grand Central wasn't designed to accommodate that tower from the beginning, since the tower would have required destroying the vaulted ceiling. And no, it wasn't in "disrepair" for decades, maybe normal wear and tear but it looked just fine when I went in there in 1998, pre-renovation.

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LOL at the structural integrity of the buildings argument.

 

I am an investor in BBs. Our third location went into that spot. While it was our only unsuccessful location to date, it had nothing to do with the building. The building was fine. We had no problems obtaining permits and building out. So, either the family is lying or something really, really bad has happened in the last 2 years that nobody knows about...

 

Also, ANY building can be saved if you want it badly enough. At the end of the day, this family is making an economic decision. They are tearing down historic buildings and a fairly famous tree and replacing it with surface parking so dinner patrons don't have to wait 3 minutes for their car to be pulled around. That is their right. It is also might right to call them out on it and to avoid every giving another $ to the Lancaster or the bistro. 

 

This is good info. Why was it unsuccessful? What might be successful in that kind of spot?

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Re: quantification.

 

If something goes unmentioned in a group of passionately like minded individuals that you typically discuss exactly this kind of thing with, I'm going to conclude it wasn't that big of a deal to begin with. Not talking number of times, I'm talking being mentioned at all.  The Montagu, Hogan Allnoch, the Ben Milam, Texas tower and many others were discussed prior to demolition. These two were not.  

 

Coverage here is a way to see who cared about these places, but by no means would it be exhaustive.

 

Ummm, yeah, the Montagu/Hogan Allnoch/Ben Milam were discussed prior to their demolition - and now these buildings are being discussed prior to their demolition.

 

Also, there has been PLENTY of discussion on here of the ever dwindling stock of historic buildings downtown, buildings of detail and character. See what I wrote above - a building does not have to be an individual landmark to be important. Most buildings in the French Quarter aren't standout individual landmarks, they're just contributing. But if you keep on taking them away, it's no longer the French Quarter.

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