 Please welcome back to the stage Stephanie Meeks, the President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Thank you very much. I'd like to begin by thanking Tim and Kim for their very generous remarks. Thank you. And to say that I have done none of this without amazing colleagues. And I wanted to ask, if you were a member of the National Trust staff, if you would please stand and be recognized for all of our work together. And secondly, I'd like to say to all the people standing in the back, there are plenty of seats up front if you'd want to sit down. And I'd welcome your company up here towards the front. Please come. And thirdly, I just want to say welcome to San Francisco and pass forward 2018. It's a real pleasure to be here with all of you this week and to be in one of America's most beautiful cities. A local writer named Herb Cain once said, one day if I go to heaven, I'll look around and say, it ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco. So here in this historic and thriving, diverse and forward-looking city, so full of opportunity and creativity, so rich with possibilities and challenges, we come together again to craft the future of preservation. And in many ways, this is a bittersweet moment for me. As Tim said, I'm stepping down as president of the trust in just a few weeks. So this is my ninth and final opportunity to open this conference and to address all of you. We've come a long way together since my first conference in Austin in 2010. And we've really put in the miles from Buffalo to San Francisco and many, many points in between. And thanks to everyone in this room's hard work and many more, to your dedication and ingenuity and passion, we've really made some great strides together. Before I came here tonight, I went back and looked at my remarks from the conference in Austin. And they had been based on weeks of sort of a listening tour that I did leading up to that first conference about what you all thought we needed to do to move the preservation movement forward. And what I heard from all of you really boiled down to three things. That preservation needed to become more visible, that it needed to become more accessible. And as always, it needed to become better funded. So nine years later, I think we've made substantial progress in each of these areas. Our work to fully embrace our role as a vocal public advocates for our history and our communities continues to grow. Through programs like National Treasures, Reurbanism, our amazing Main Street Network, and NTCIC, along with the great work that you all are doing to save cherished historical and meaningful places, Americans can see and are experiencing firsthand the ways that older places enrich our lives. In hot markets and cold markets, downtowns and small towns, more and more communities are embracing preservation as the way forward, both in saving places that matter and addressing the contemporary urban challenges like disinvestment and displacement, resiliency, and sustainability. Meanwhile, our Hope Crew has completed more than 150 projects, trained more than 1,000 students and veterans, and performed more than $18 million of preservation work and recruited thousands more volunteers to protect places significant to their communities. And our African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, as Tim said, launched a year ago tonight, has brought a new audience to our work and has already attracted $12 million in gifts and pledges in support of saving these diverse historic places. So I stand before you tonight to say that I think that historic preservation is a broader and bolder movement than ever before. As we work harder to tell our full story in a way that does justice to the experience of all Americans, our numbers and our relevance are growing. And yes, we've even made some progress in the funding department. It came down to the wire, but because everyone in this room rallied and pushed and cajoled Congress and wouldn't take no for an answer, we were able to save the federal historic tax credit last December. And as all you all know, yes, we were worried when we were together last November and it was a remarkable accomplishment. As you all know, the historic tax credit has been an unbelievable tool in terms of job creation and private investment. It's helped save tens of thousands of historic buildings over the country. And because all of you, that success can continue. Through the Action Fund and the remarkable and results driven work of the National Trust Community Investment Corporation and the National Main Street Center and Network, we're bringing new donors and investors to our work every day. And we've succeeded in expanding other sources of federal revenue from the Historic Preservation Fund to support for historically black colleges and universities and the Civil Rights Trail Network. And with a rare spirit of bipartisanship and thanks again to all of your advocacy, a parks bill has been moving its way through Congress that includes six and a half billion dollars for deferred maintenance. And that's something we're going to keep working on in the Congress to come. So looking back, I'm proud of the hard work we've put in over the past decade and the results that we've been achieving together. More than 50 years after the National Historic Preservation Act, we've stayed true to our original vision for the movement and strengthened its foundations and community. And we've also helped save the best of our nation, and we've brought Americans together. We've also continued to innovate and created the conditions to ensure future growth and sustainability. So we've come a long way over these past nine years, and I think the road ahead is bright. But of course, there are challenges and opportunities that we can't afford to miss. We're in California, a state that has always looked to and led us to the future. And so tonight as I bid my farewell, I want to talk about five themes that I believe will help guide preservation over the next decade and beyond. The first is something that we've talked a lot about recently, and it was the subject of my plenary address last year. And that's putting people first. I believe the best way to continue attracting more converts to our work is by ensuring that preservation is speaking to the needs of families today. The needs that we can help fill are both prosaic and fundamental. Many neighborhoods in America are looking for more jobs in economic growth. Others, like San Francisco, in the face of rising costs are looking for more affordable housing opportunities. And preservation can help with both. We can help bring more investment to cold markets and more inclusion to hot ones. Every time an abandoned warehouse becomes a grocery store, an old hotel becomes a community center, a church is reborn as a dance theater. Preservation is helping to meet the needs of today's citizens. But our work speaks to deeper needs. In 1943, the psychologist Abraham Maslov came up with a theory of human motivation that he called the hierarchy of needs. And after our most basic needs like air, food, water, and personal safety are met, he argued that the next most powerful need that's felt by every human being is belonging. And as you all know, we see that every day. How old places speak to that need for belonging in a way that little else can. They make that the town that we live in feel like home. They connect us not just to our neighbors, but to ourselves, through our memories of these places. And they also connect us to those who come before us and those who will come after. They help us understand that while we ourselves may only be here for a few decades, our actions will echo on long after we're gone, just as those of previous generations affect our world today. That sense of belonging, that really potent sense of connection across time, these are powerful, even elemental human forces that lie at the heart of historic preservation. And now for a shameless commercial plug. Our colleague, Tom Mays, has recently written a book on this very topic. It's called Wild Places Matter. And you can buy it at the registration desk this week or you can buy it on Amazon. But I hope you'll buy it here because then you can get Tom to sign it for you. So Tom, congratulations on your new book. So as we work to try to meet these basic needs of families through our preservation work, let's also explore these deeper needs of connection, belonging, and meaning. Taking these seriously, I believe, will help us broaden the frame of our work from saving important buildings to preserving the intangible heritage, the customs, the culture, and the practices that undergird them. On Friday morning, we'll hear from Milton Chen, the former executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, who will talk to us about why preserving intangible heritage is so critical to educating the next generation. We'll also learn about some of the innovative tools that our hosts in San Francisco have come up with to support the preservation of intangible heritage. Mike Bueller and his great team at San Francisco Heritage were instrumental in creating the Legacy Business Preservation Fund. It acts as a registry and provides critical financial support for historic small businesses threatened by the rising costs of their leases. And the city has also been leading the way in creating a strong local cultural district network, such as the Caye 24 Latino District in Mission Hill and the Filipino and LGBT districts in Soma. By working to change an ever-changing city, these districts will help ensure that the customs and traditions that have so defined San Francisco over the decades will continue to thrive. And these recent human experiences bring me to my second theme in the spirit of being close to Silicon Valley, and that's innovation. As preservationists, we may focus on the past, but we've never been afraid to embrace the new, whether it's new science, new technology, new research and new ideas. There's so much exciting work happening all over the country. From Los Angeles to Louisiana and Buffalo back to Boise, more cities and states are realizing the potential of GIS mapping to advocate for better preservation outcomes. In Annapolis, Alameda and dozens of other places, cities are creating 3D laser scans of their historic assets, like the one that you're seeing here, both to preserve them and to analyze how they'll be impacted by weather or climate change. With Google Arts and Culture, the National Trust recently created an immersive virtual reality tour of Villa Loouro, allowing people all over the world to explore Madame C.J. Walker's remarkable estate for themselves. Let's take a look. And as we harness new technologies like virtual reality and mobile apps, our horizons will continue to expand. Kim spoke a few minutes ago about the Richard D. Streehouse Foundation and some of the work they've been doing to explore the connection between old places and altruism. And as neuroscientists unlock the secrets of the mind, they're learning more about the biological origins of our place attachment. Why we respond so strongly to certain places and especially older places. To take one example from a fascinating book I read this past year called Cognitive Architecture, our brains are particularly adept at reading the faces of other humans, which is why we tend to read faces into all kinds of things, including the buildings that surround us. And it's why we instinctively get nervous in places that are so big we can't read the faces of passersby. In other words, neuroscience is proving that we innately prefer architecture at a human scale, that quite literally older and smaller is better. Speaking of which brings me to my third theme for the future and that's bringing preservation to scale. There's so much good work going on around the country but there are also many opportunities that are left unrealized due to lack of funding in many cases and sometimes lack of vision. Our research and policy lab has found that while many of America's most prominent cities are primarily composed of buildings that were built before 1942, only a handful of these statistically speaking are protected by any kind of designation. In Los Angeles, nearly 40% of the city's buildings were built before World War II but as of 2014, fewer than 3% were locally designated. In Chicago, that number is 5 to 6%. In Philadelphia, it's only around 2%. In here in San Francisco, roughly 2 thirds of the city's buildings are pre-war, which is quite remarkable when you think that the entire city was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. But again, only around 2% of those buildings are designated as historic. Similar percentages can be found all around the country in many American cities so there are plenty of opportunities out there for us to scale up our work beyond individual buildings to blocks in entire neighborhoods. Cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia have really taken some major steps forward in the past years to allow for more preservation projects and their downtowns are flourishing as a result. In Los Angeles, a partnership in 2000 between neighborhood groups, city leaders, developers and preservationists led to, which was led by our friends at the LA Conservancy, resulted in a new adaptive reuse ordinance that made it easier to reuse historic buildings. It removed regulatory barriers like burdens and parking requirements and it made it possible to repurpose older buildings as apartments, lofts and hotels, many of which had sat vacant for decades. And as a result, the population of downtown LA has tripled and it's now a thriving residential and commercial hub with an astonishing 14,000 new housing units in older buildings. Philadelphia is working on its own adaptive reuse ordinance right now and it's taken other important steps to encourage street life and vitality in its historic districts. Around the same time that Los Angeles began its work, Philadelphia passed an ordinance to make it easier for restaurants and cafes to offer more outdoor sidewalk seating. And as a result, since 2001, between 2001 and last year, their outdoor seating has grown by 439%. So there are real opportunities to see more buildings reused and to bring more life to our historic downtowns. But of course, to accomplish that, we need to expand who we're working with to embrace new partners and to think creatively about new projects. We've heard great examples tonight from our award winners about their work with city officials, local advocates, developers and property owners to modernize regulations, to lift barriers and to make it easier to breathe new life into older buildings. And I'd also like to propose tonight that we work together to get a historic tax credit in every state in the nation. We need to continue to seek out new and innovative funding sources that will support our historic preservation projects. For example, last year, the opportunity zones that were created in the tax overhaul will really boost community reinvestment and provides an interesting opportunity for the preservation community to attract new funding and investment to our work. So to quote one of our most famous Silicon Valley inventors, Steve Jobs, we just need to think different. In this past August, I was proud to be part of the grand reopening of the Cooper-Millera Adobe, which Kim referenced in her comments tonight, a project not too far from here in the historic downtown of Monterey. Cooper-Millera has been a national trust historic site since 1972, and even a decade before that, it was identified as a critical anchor in the more cohesive downtown Monterey plan. Our friends at California State Parks and the Monterey State Park Association did an exemplary job of keeping Cooper-Millera alive in its diverse history and the history of 19th century California alive over many decades, but the site really cried out for adaptive reuse and investment. Over the years, this two and a half acre property has been a dance school, a beauty salon, a tavern, and a boys and girls club, though I hasten to add, not all at the same time, which is why after much discussion with the city of Monterey and the local community, we pushed outside our own comfort zone at the national trust to develop a model that we've been calling shared use. This new and revived Cooper-Millera now includes commercial and community oriented uses, such as an event space, a restaurant, a bakery, along with bilingual exhibits talking about life in 19th century California. We never could have ensured Cooper-Millera's viability, let alone its continued prosperity without bringing multiple partners to the table and saying yes to a dynamic new role in use for this historic building. And I especially want to recognize tonight our partners, Foothill partners, and Doug Wheely, their principal, for working with us over the past eight years to reimagine and re-envision the Cooper-Millera experience. I hope you'll all get a chance to visit because now Cooper-Millera's story will be more broadly told and its history brought back to life once more in a revitalizing downtown Monterey. And we believe and hope that it can serve as an example and a model of sorts to the 15,000 or so other house museums in this country who may be looking for a refreshed vision in the 21st century. Talking about new partners brings me to my fourth theme one that has always been close to my heart and that's finding common cause with our friends in conservation. As many of you know, before I joined the National Trust in 2010, I spent two decades with an organization called the Nature Conservancy. And as I said in Austin nine years ago, I believe that conservation and preservation are essentially synonymous. In fact, America is unique in how our two movements have grown so independently of one another, pretty much everywhere else in the world, they're really considered arms of the same cause. So while we often have distinct focuses and different tools, we have our own unique cultures, I've always been more struck by the commonalities between our two movements. Both are built on a keen appreciation of the fragility of our heritage, be it natural or man-made and a strong desire to preserve what's unique and irreplaceable. Both movements are committed to sustainable solutions and focused on helping communities take action to preserve the things that matter the most to them. And both are full of people who recognize the power of a mutually beneficial partnership because when we work together, amazing things happen. Tomorrow, one of my favorite authors, the award-winning author, activist and citizen writer, Terry Tempus Williams, will talk about the intricate connections between nature and culture and how they undergird our work. And I hope that many of you got to hear Victoria Herman's really remarkable talk earlier today about resilience in the face of accelerating climate change at our trust live. Of course, very sadly, climate change is an issue that is not going away. And according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their most recent report, its most serious effects are going to be felt decades earlier than previously believed. Every year now, the global thermostat gets hotter and droughts and wildfires and storms grow more intense as if we need to be reminded. The impending threat of drastic sea level rise and coastal flooding in America's communities is becoming more dire and more real and more imminent. It's going to take leadership at all levels of government to address these impacts. And as preservationists, as Victoria said earlier today, we have really critical roles to play. According to the Department of Energy, operating buildings accounts for 41% of America's consumption. Energy consumption and 38% of our carbon emissions. So barring some kind of technological, silver bullet kind of breakthrough, it's really hard to imagine that we're going to reach a sustainable climate outcome for our country without thinking about how we're going to recycle more of our building stock. Studies have shown that commercial buildings built before 1920 still tend to be among the most energy efficient buildings. And our research has found that it takes decades, as much as 70 years for even the best lead certified building to make up for the energy and environmental costs of demolition and new construction. So every time a 50,000 square foot commercial building is demolished, the energy equivalent of 640,000 gallons of gasoline is released into the atmosphere. And we have another important role to play as well. As preservationists, we are accustomed to thinking about our built environment over time. And just as we've looked back over centuries to places, to put our historic places in context, we now need to help communities look forward centuries and begin preparing for what we all know is coming. Climate change can be a little bit of a downer. So I'm going to switch gears now to my final theme for the evening, and this is an important one. Connecting to the joyful aspects of our work. The best part of my job over the past eight years has been traveling around the country and getting to see so much of the remarkable work that's underway every day in all 50 states of our nation. When I talk to preservationists across the country, I'm always struck by the passion that they bring to this work. It's this sense of fun and it's this sense of empowerment and it's incredibly contagious. We felt that contagion firsthand this summer with perhaps our most ambitious national treasure marketing campaign yet. And that was the great American road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles along Route 66. With State Farm as our presenting sponsor, National Geographic, Airstream, and several other new partners, we sent a team of preservationists, writers, and photographers on a one month, eight state, 2400 mile road trip along Main Street of America. Along the way they took in some great sites like the Gemini Giant in Wilmington, Illinois, the Fame Blue Whale of Catoosa, Oklahoma, Elmer's Long Bottle Tree Ranch in Orogrande, California. They explored the history of Route 66 from the Dust Bowl to the Green Book, which informed black travelers of safe havens along the route. They talked with thousands of residents along the road and worked to capture their stories, photos, and memories of America's first highway. And everywhere they went they met people who have fallen in love with Route 66 and the 300 communities that line it. And when they heard why we were taking this trip, they wanted to get more involved. Preservation can be very difficult and complicated, but the reason that preservation continues to attract new advocates all over America is because it's infused with joy and love for our country and for our communities. We've reached California and the Pacific this evening and my time on the road with you is coming to an end. But I will always remember and cherish the joy and passion and friends I've made on this preservation journey with you. And I wanna thank you for the friendship you've shown me and for all you've done and continue to do to save the places that matter. Thank you.