 All right, well, it looks like we've reached critical mass. Hello, everyone, I'm Rhonda Sincavage with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and welcoming you to the first of a two-part series, Planning, Preservation, and Changed, developed in partnership with the American Planning Association. Today, our topic is how planning and preservation can work together to create great places. This series is made possible by members of Preservation Leadership Forum, the professional membership program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. We thank all our members and thank you for being here today. Before we get started, I have a few logistical items to cover. First, captioning has been made available for this webinar. We also ask that all abide by the code of conduct that has been put in the chat. If you have questions for the panelists, we ask that you message them directly through the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. You can submit questions at any point during the program, but we'll hold off to answer questions until the designated portion toward the end for panelists to answer any questions. Also, this webinar is being recorded and a copy will be emailed to the address that you provided when you registered for this program. And then finally, all of our webinar recordings are available on the Forum webinar library. To provide a little bit of background and context, the National Trust has been working with the Urban Design and Preservation Division of the American Planning Association for the last several months in recognition that we have a lot to learn from each other. I'm often reminded of a 1984 journal article from the Journal of American Planning Association entitled, The Planner and the Preservationist, an Uneasy Alliance. And this article stated that the two disciplines have separate and distinct goals, serve different populations, and experience dissimilar patterns of organizational growth. Nearly 30 years later, in the same journal, another article appeared with the title, Revealing Synergies, Tensions and Silences Between Historic Preservation and Planning. And while that recognized we've made great progress, we still have closer collaboration that is needed. And we believe this partnership will address some of those silences, build on those synergies, and advance our work and knowledge to unite us around shared vision and interdisciplinary goals. So this partnership was very evident a few years, or a few weeks ago, at the National Planning Conference in Philadelphia, where we jointly hosted a sold-out reception, had a full room at a 7 a.m. Monday morning division meeting, and had countless people come to us at the National Trust booth just to let us know we're so glad you're here. So we really believe that we're on the right path with this partnership. The next phase of this partnership is this webinar series. And with over 1,000 people registering just for the event today, I know we're on the right track. I thank all of you for being here. I'm so thankful for this partnership, and also hope that you'll all consider attending Part 2 of this series, which is taking place on Monday or Friday, May 19th, to investigate preservation as an effective planning tool. But now let's get started with the program today. I'm delighted to introduce our moderator, Alicia Berg, who's been an instrumental part of this partnership. Alicia is the Assistant Vice President for Campus Planning and Sustainability at the University of Chicago, where she leads everything from master planning to overseeing strategies to protect and adapt historic resources on campus. Prior to that, Alicia also served as the Vice President for Campus Environments at the Columbia College of Chicago and served several roles in the Chicago Department of Planning and Development. Additionally, Alicia has served on leadership roles for several nonprofit boards, including ULI Chicago, Landmarks Illinois, and Neighborspace. And of course, Alicia is the current Chair of Preservation for the Urban Design and Preservation Division of the American Planning Association. So welcome and thank you so much, Alicia. Thank you, Rhonda. I've never heard anybody announce my new title at the Urban Design Division, so thank you so much. And I love your finding that information from the Journal of American Planning Association. That was great. I love that. So thank you all for being here today. We're super excited to be here, and I think we have a great program. But before we dive in, I just want to introduce our organization a little bit. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the American Planning Association. It has 40,000 members from across 90 countries, with 47 chapters throughout the U.S., and I guess most relevant to today, is it has 25 sort of subject area divisions. And of course, we're the Urban Design and Preservation Division. Next slide, please. For those of us, though, that are interested in the past and future of our built environment, this is the division for us. We, it does provide a nationwide community for idea exchange and relationship building. And this is where we promote the design excellence and equitable public realm and stewardship of our historic resources. And we promote that within the planning profession and beyond. And I would say that the members of this committee are obviously self-selecting, so there's a lot of like-minded people in this division. And we do know that the planning profession can use our advocacy as well. We're, we think we're the perfect professional place to host this partnership with the National Trust, which is really, you know, long overdue. We're really thrilled about it. And I think especially, too, we've been coming together as organizations where the trust has really been moving more and more towards an increased focus on saving places and I think we align a lot in many areas as a result of that. So if we could get to the next slide, I would be happy to introduce our speakers for today. It's a group of seasoned planners with a lot of experience in integrating preservation into planning work, the challenges of balancing preservation with growth and how preservation can be an economic and community development tool and has been used very effectively for that. So I start with introducing Matt Ashby, Vice President for Development Services at AIRS Associates. After 15 years of public sector service as the planning director with the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Matt moved to the private sector in 2015 where he's in his current role. And he deploys multidisciplinary teams to create great places from concept through construction and helps communities advance their vision. He's well versed in downtown development, comprehensive and strategic planning, code writing, design review and preservation. His downtown credentials include extensive works with main street programs and downtown development across the country. Matt has a masters of regional planning and another one in urban design from the University of Colorado. Next is Lucy Kempf. She was named Executive Director of the Metropolitan Nashville Davidson County Planning Department in 2018 where she leads a staff of 85 in guiding the metro areas growth and development, processing development applications and contributing to the community's vision and direction for the future. Lucy came to Nashville after 10 years at the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington DC where she was director of urban design and plan review. There she managed such projects as the commission's building height master plan and she led analysis of major projects including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Center and the Eisenhower Memorial. She holds a master's degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia and a certificate in art and architectural history from Florida State University's international program in Florence. And finally, we have Gwen Wright who from 2013 to 2022 was the director of the Montgomery County Planning Department of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission which I kind of want to understand a little bit better. Maybe we have a minute on that. We have Gwen Wright where she oversaw a wide range of projects to improve the quality of life by conserving and enhancing the natural and built environment. Previously she had supervised the environmental planning, transportation planning and historic preservation sections of the department. She began her career as director of architectural design and redevelopment for the Galveston Historical Foundation in Texas and was later chief of the development division which has an awful lot of historic fabric. She has degrees in architecture and architectural history from Yale University and currently serves on the ULI Washington Advisory Board and the University of Maryland's Urban Studies and Planning Program Advisory Board. So just next slide for one more reminder to please make sure to put your questions into the Q&A function because the rest of the hour is really going to be a conversation and then it's going to be followed by a 15-minute Q&A time period. So please do put your questions in the Q&A. And with that, if all of our speakers could please turn on their cameras and unmute themselves. Hi, everyone. Hey, Matt, take off your mute. There you go. Here we are. All right. So when we were preparing for this conversation we couldn't stop talking to each other. So hopefully we won't talk all over each other. I'm sure we'll be very professional. But one of the things when we learned as we were preparing for the conversation is that this set of planners has a love of both planning and preservation. So what I'd like to do is just kick it off with each of you explaining how you came to that in your career. Why do you have a passion for this work? Does anybody want to go first? I'd be glad to start. I'm thrilled to be here. I really started my career as a preservationist. I spent the first really 20 years of my career working directly in historic preservation, first for a private nonprofit preservation group in Galveston, Texas. And then for the Bicounty Regional Planning Agency, the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, building a preservation program in Montgomery County. And then I sort of rose through the ranks and ultimately ended up being the planning director for Montgomery County, even though I don't have a degree in planning. But I like to say that everything I needed to learn, I learned in historic preservation. And I really do believe that historic preservation has so much connection to good planning. It's about creating sense of place. It's about doing effective community participation and outreach. It's about working with multiple stakeholders to come to good solutions and outside the box solutions frequently. It needs a lot of creativity and it really teaches us that everything we work on is connected. Planning, economics, architecture, and most importantly, people. So I'm thrilled to be here to talk about that connection in greater detail. Thanks, Greg. I'm happy to go next. I guess the one thing that attracted me about both planning and preservation is that it is an exercise in storytelling. Living out here in the West, we've got a lot of great stories to tell with the geographies, the landscapes, the built environment, all contribute to tell a dynamic story. And both our built environment as well as our preservation is rooted in those experiences. I started out in history as a history major and gravitated towards architecture and planning and really just couldn't decide. And I think kind of complimenting what Gwen said, preservation and planning is really at the intersection of all these great things that I think all of us are fortunate to get to participate in, in addition to working with people. And I think ultimately we have to bring back our professional perspectives back to the people that we serve and the communities that we're building and make sure that we're balancing the best that we can in terms of planning with the best that we can in terms of preservation. And I think that's where a healthy tension arrives for us to have this dialogue of how do we preserve things while still making sure that we're building the best communities that we can. Well, thank you so much for having me here today. It's a thrill to visit with, with this panel and the broader group in our professional community. So I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and as a teenager who had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up, I was really inspired when the city reclaimed our riverfront, including in a historic commercial district, very close to where President Clinton Library is today. And I was so inspired by the way that we used the historic heart of the city to begin to bring people together again. And I think that was the first moment that I knew I wanted to be a planner, but I didn't have those words. So many years later, I went to Washington, D.C. and, you know, D.C. is a city that incorporates preservation well, despite some other mistakes in the 60s and 70s with the interstate placement and the like. I think D.C. generally values preservation deeply. It's not just the structure. It's the design of the city. It's the landscape design of the city. All of that is integrated. And so coming to Nashville from that setting was a radical change for me from a perspective of how to balance preservation with planning where preservation historically had not been part of every decision. And so Nashville very much lacks the regulatory tools that we had in Washington, D.C. and I can get into why that is. And so we have to make different arguments. I would say in Nashville though that we've had some very creative outcomes that I think probably some folks on this call or in the preservation community might question. Then I'm happy to show those and have a conversation about whether those were good outcomes or not. But what I will say is working in a southern city like Nashville where there's a real protection of property rights requires a different level of thinking about preservation that I think ultimately hopefully will make it not just a given as perhaps it might be in Washington, but something that is forefront and valued in every decision. But we're on a journey here, I would say. But for a city that's one of the fastest growing in the southeast, certainly in perhaps the country. Preservation is the core of our identity. And when you change and you're going through transformational change to remain kind of authentic to who we are. And distinct from other cities. We have to protect our resources. Number one and number two. To. To ensure that we're growing in a thoughtful way. We have to kind of hold on to that sense of self. And I think preservation is central to that. Otherwise we'll be anywhere. So I'm looking forward to this conversation today. Well, I just have to say as a native, Nashvilleian who now is in Chicago. Lucy, I am so glad you are. You are planning commissioner for Nashville. I'll just share really quickly. And I know I'm not a speaker, but I just wanted to say the reason why I went to planning school was because of a preservation battle. And I think that's one of the most important things that happened at school was because of a preservation battle in downtown Nashville that the preservation is lost. The art deco Tennessee theater. I don't know who's been heard about that because it's ancient history by now, but thank you for being there and having that perspective. So. So the next question is. So when preservation and planning has been aligned on some things that you've been working on, how do you describe what was your most rewarding experience or your biggest success as a result of that partnership or perspective? Well, I can can jump in. And it's interesting because you just mentioned a preservation of a theater. That is a project in Montgomery County. That really resonates for me as one of our. Successful melding of preservation and planning and redevelopment. Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland had been a very booming suburb in the 1930s, 40s, 50s by the 60s and 70s. It had fallen into decay. And there was a lot of discussion about how to revitalize it. And at the heart of the downtown was a property, an art deco property called the Silver Theater and Shopping Center. Designed by John Eberson, who's a sort of well known art deco theater architect. And the building had suffered a lot. Elements of it had been removed. The theater itself was empty. There were still a few businesses in the Shopping Center, but not many. And there was a long community debate, a very vociferous debate about how to best revitalize downtown Silver Spring. One of the suggestions was literally they brought in the developers of Mall of America who wanted to tear down everything and put in a large water park in the place of the Silver Theater and Shopping Center. Happily that did not happen. And what did happen instead was a restoration of the theater and Shopping Center with the reuse of the theater by the American Film Institute as a movie theater. And a variety of shops going into the Shopping Center but it was all connected to a much larger project interestingly done using urban renewal as a tool. And I think I'd like to talk later a little bit more about urban renewal and historic preservation. But it was a sort of again, melding of preservation. And new development and revitalization in a community that was a sort of, you know, first tier suburban urban area just outside of Washington, D.C. and it was tremendously successful. And I think the retention of the Silver Theater and Shopping Center really gave that project the sense of place. It brought people from not only the immediate neighborhood but really from the entire Washington area to experience the American Film Institute at the Silver Theater. And it was really, again, a great example of how preservation, revitalization, planning and even urban renewal, which is in many cases not viewed as a positive, was able to recreate a very deteriorated downtown and became the focal point for revitalization of the whole area. I have to say I'm just dying to know how come the Mall of America didn't move forward. Was that just economic or what did you do to stop it, Glenn? Well, the community had a lot of concerns about it for sure. It did, it was being championed by our then county executive. But I think ultimately it was kind of project, it sort of collapsed of its own weight and also strong community opposition, not just from, yeah, not just preservationists but really a community who said, we don't see our downtown as being a water park. We want something that's going to be a downtown. And I think ultimately that was a very good decision. There you go. I'm happy to go next. As far as the greatest privilege that I've had, it was born out of a bit of heartbreak. I think everyone here knows that on Christmas day two years ago, our historic district downtown was bombed. And it was devastating for many reasons. As I mentioned, Nashville has some historic fabric left from sort of its early development years, 1870s and 1880s. But a lot of that is gone. And one of the very best districts that we had is on Second Avenue. And the best way I can describe this is to show it to you. And so tell me, can you see this Market Street image? So can you everyone see it? So this is Second Avenue at the city's early days in 1875, looking north from Broadway. This is one block off of the river and Nashville is a river city. It's center of commerce. This was the site of Second Avenue. It's one of the longest Victorian blocks in the country from a preservation perspective. Really beautiful buildings. And that is a view of the same structures that were destroyed in the bombing. And when this happened, a lot of the safety oriented departments in the city rightfully immediately wanted to just begin to demolish structures because we were afraid that, you know, a person experiencing homelessness might wander into the area and be killed if one of the blocks, the buildings fell. This was the worst of the damage, but you can see elsewhere that some of the buildings were intact. And I worked really closely with our historic preservation department to really set out a process for salvaging and saving materials where the structure was so destabilized as these were, but also saving buildings that I think folks thought, well, these are just going to have to come down. And this has been an ongoing renovation and reconstruction effort. And here's a shot of what some of the buildings look like today. And you'll see that we've saved the shelves. And we're beginning to really try to think about how to redevelop these sites and whether these old materials can be used. And one of the things that we've struggled with is if those core buildings right in the center, there are about four or five together that experience the greatest damage from the blast, what would it mean to have new development there? And so we started to talk about what a new, what would that language need to be? And we had a healthy debate over whether it needed to imitate or be contrasting. But one of the things that really came up initially is that while everyone loves the long Victorian block, it didn't attract as many pedestrians as you might think. And part of that was because there were very few breaks at the ground plane. And so we began to talk about what it would look like to include a series of arcades that connected Second Avenue to our riverfront. And so it's not as great as what was there before, right? We want what was there before. But if we can't have it, we're going to have something that's for us and interesting. And this is the first avenue facade of some buildings that weren't damaged or had less damage. And you can see that arcades could potentially be part of the language of a new development. And so we began to think that through. I just have to say that I think Nashville is a phenomenal can-do city. And when something like this happens, you really feel it. And I think that this probably will always be the thing that I'm most proud of on the preservation side, just finding a way through a conversation that starts with terror and then, you know, a lot of stress for the first three or four months on the health safety side and then really being able to have a good design-oriented planning-oriented conversation, which is a more comfortable space. But as a city, I think we've come through that well. It's not done yet. So I should not test the fates by saying it's finished. It's not. I think we're in a better place than we were to, you know, a year ago. And I hope next year we'll be in a better place than we are today. That's absolutely captivating, Lucy, just to see that example and how you've kind of transitioned the story from, you know, what felt like a dismal desperate situation into something that is a positive contributor to the community. I think in my terms, I'm going to go to a micro scale of preservation and tell a story about Kimball, Nebraska. It's a community about 1,500 people in the panhandle, probably much like many communities you all have experienced didn't have a preservation ethic to speak of. Their main street is about one block long. It has fairly well intact urban design and buildings framing the street, not a lot of surface parking lots, not a lot of breaks within that traditional one and two story streetscape, but they had buildings that were neglected for years and were starting to fall down just due to the lack of economic investment in the community. And our firm was called in to actually help out with a Brownfield assessment grant on a property, the Longhorn Hotel, which was a two-story building. In that area, though, because of the disinvestment, the roof was caving in, you know, pigeons had infested the building. And basically they had had a firm come by and do a drive-by structural assessment of the property. And they said, no, this building can't be saved. So you can imagine in a community like that, where there's not a whole lot of economic investment happening, if that building were to be demolished, it would end up as a parking lot, maybe a metal building, certainly not contributing to the overall vitality of Main Street. And the big win was that we were able to come in and ask some questions about the reuse of the property. It turns out that the community had a huge need for upper-floor housing and apartments. And by penciling out the economics of that redevelopment scenario, a developer was able to come in that had been familiar with the community and purchase the building and renovated it. There's now apartments upstairs. There's a couple of shops on the ground floor level. But ultimately I think it was the fact that instead of going in and saying, hey, this is such an important building, we took a little bit of a reverse planning approach to it. And really it's like applied preservation in that we identified a financial strategy in a small community that would work to preserve that building. And I think Alicia originally asked me on the panel to represent the National Main Street approach, which is a fantastic applied preservation tool of really looking at how you reuse those buildings and give them a new economic reason for being. And I think that is one of the key things and the key success points of aligning those two elements to really achieve success. So to me, the moral of that story is a drive by structural assessment is not really worth it. So that was good. I guess you guys just ignored that structural assessment or whatever. We did. We did. I mean, it's always about challenging authority, at least in my mind and saying, hey, let's let's ask some more questions and see if we can make this work. I can imagine there's a lot of preservationists on this call that know what I'm talking about with that drive by structural assessment, not taking it very seriously. Okay, so now that we've been all happy, joy, joy about planning and preservation, we all know that they don't always align. And so I was hoping, I don't know who's going to be brave enough to go first to tell me about, you know, what's been your most challenging experience when the two really have, you know, been in conflict, you know, and what lesson did you learn from that situation? I'm happy to jump into this one because there are lots in Nashville. And I mentioned before that preservation is very much part of planning in Washington, DC. I think a lot of that has to do with the section 106 process being so integral to how we look at federal properties. And to the extent that federal properties and national resources define a lot of the key resource areas there. You've got some automatic sort of protections. I will share a scandalous screenshot with you, but I'm sure we'll get a lot of people unhappy. But before I do, let me just defend myself and say that Nashville has, for those of you who work in local government here, you know that local overlays are often some of the most protective. And Nashville has some local overlays in downtown, but in many of our historic structures are not protected at all. And so we use tools through the downtown code, which I can talk about that's a happier story where we transfer development rights to protect buildings, but you ask for one that might not be so well received. And it's best just shown. So I will do that. And so we had an old, really cool old federal bank building downtown. You probably have those in the city. Let me see if it, can you guys see this? Yes. Is it showing up? Okay. So you can sort of see a shot of the structure here, right in the heart of downtown, one of those wonderful old banks. And we had a proposal to build an addition to it. It was not protected. And of course, I think our, our national guidelines would, would suggest that perhaps a one-story addition could be appropriate. And so the property owner did not want to pursue that. They were interested in sort of matching the heights. Here at the corner. And so we evaluated a proposal where, you know, you could do, you know, a large scale addition. We did not approve matching the building on the corner, but we did approve an addition. And so that was, you know, radical contrast. When we looked in the U.S. for precedent, we didn't find that many, but we found a fair amount in Europe. And, and so part of the proposal was to set the addition back. And also then to agree to place the historic element in an overlay. So if they never build the addition, they're not protected. And so the historic team, you know, really vigorously disagreed with us on this one. And I tend to be conservative. Nashville's lost a lot of buildings this way downtown. Where they're not protected and the developer, all they have to do is put a demolition permanent and have it removed. And I would prefer to save the structure. And have an addition. And so we had a really healthy disagreement about that. Had this building been protected, I never would have entertained this idea. So. Anyway, anybody have any thoughts or criticisms on this one? I just have to say from being dealing with these kind of situations in the city of Chicago. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that from being dealing with these kind of situations, the city of Chicago, it's looking like a project that was approved in Chicago. So I think. You know, you set it back. It's clearly distinguished from the, you know, the historic building. And some of these kinds of deals you kind of need to be making. So I, if that's really your worst example, I don't think it's going to be a good idea. I think it's going to be a good idea. I don't think it's going to be a good idea for anybody else though, but that's okay. So when you, I would love that. I would love that there. There are many others. Yeah. Yeah. I think that this also brings up an important topic that is sort of woven through our discussion, which is the general topic of design. I think that historic preservation. Has frequently. You know, I think that it's important for the city of Chicago to have projects to come up with very creative. Outside the box. Design solutions. And a lot of what we've seen. In terms of changes to historic buildings. Has resulted. In great design. Now. Some of it's resulted in really, really bad design. And you are looking at making a significant change to a historic building, whether it's a listed building or not. You really, really have to. Hold the line and demand the best. Design possible. It cannot be done. In a way that's not thoughtful in a way that's not really. Carefully, carefully. Conceived. And so I think that one of the reasons that certain projects get. Sort of a bad rep. Is that they are additions or changes to historic buildings that have been done. On the cheap in a less than thoughtful way. And with really. Not with excellent design. And so I think. Planning. Should. Promote. In all communities, urban, suburban and rural should be promoting the highest quality. Of design and that that is something where. Preservationists and planners in theory should be able to come together and find some common ground. And so I think that's a good point. I've seen a lot of positive things in the chat. So I think Lucy, people are sort of agreeing that you did a pretty good job. Matt. Yeah, I mean, I think when you're highlighted, the fact that we often don't have the luxury of coming at preservation from a purist perspective. The same thing is true of planning that, you know, we have a lot of discussion between when you've got questions that aren't black and white. We actually had a hospital expansion in Cheyenne while I was planning director. And the proposed use was for a cancer center. So, you know, it expanded into a historic neighborhood, a single family homes. Nothing particularly notable as far as the historic buildings. But the preservation community came out in opposition of it. And it was really a tough, tough discussion and tough battle. Again, because you're trying to acknowledge the fact that a cancer center is an important function of a community and maybe not a battle that you're going to win on a pure preservation argument. So one of the things that we tried to do was to navigate the planning world and create a system of checks and balances that enabled these conversations of should we demolish additional historic structures, you know, for good reason and what happens to offset those impacts. And we actually came up with a almost an impact fee for demolition that was then routed towards other preservation efforts to enable other activities to take place and be funded where previously no historic preservation funding was previously available. And so it gave us that opportunity to start to create more of a robust legacy program through this loss that we were experiencing and have that ability to really advance preservation, even though we were losing some historic structures, we were still advancing the overall goal of preservation. So again, just navigating that that gray space in the middle, I think is where planning and preservation can really come together. Well, so nobody had an experience where it was just negative, negative. I can think, you know, I could think of one where we lost a building in Chicago that I was really sad about that I couldn't do anything about, but. Oh, I mean, National has has led a lot of great historic structures go. I mean, we've we have consistently consistently balanced our growth or given more weight to our growth needs, integrating transit with higher impact land use planning in midtown portions of downtown. And so there are many, many instances where historically we have made that decision. So it's not a wonderful story here. Okay, well, you know, so for example, so I think you were talking you were maybe starting to allude to this but I do think it's a really interesting example with music grow in Nashville, which was, you know, single story bungalows where the, you know, the recording studios were located and there's a lot of development pressure and that because it's adjacent to midtown. And I don't believe it ever got really designated in any kind of historic district way, but did you do something with transfer development rights there or something like that? How's that going there? So we have I have an example to show you of a transfer development rights project downtown where we protected a historic structure. It has not taken off as much on music grow. For those of you who are familiar with Nashville music grow is several parallel blocks where we have some of the most important music related history in our city, which is a character defining feature for us. The southern most two blocks have these wonderful bungalows that, you know, used to house recording studios and songwriter, songwriter venues and things like that. And they are under enormous pressure from growth, but also from changes in the music industry. And so where we've gone to a more digital platform where songwriters are struggling to own whole buildings and may desire a different kind of space. And so every time one of these structures comes down because they're not protected, you know, everyone is really upset, including us at planning. The question I've asked our friends in the preservation office is how do you balance the cultural and economic value of the music industry? And is that what's most important about music grow? And is it the physical environment? And what if those are in conflict? So a lot of musicians are saying to us, really what we want is to be able to rent a small room that has lots of technical features that we can write and record music. And we don't want to own a whole house. We want buildings that are have really great technology and you don't have that in these 1920 structures. And so if we care about rooting music and music grow, that really is in some instances in conflict with the structures that have been there for 100 years. And so that has been a painful conversation. I've got a couple of slides I can show you, but I'll just say that, you know, that is an existential threat, I think to the city. If we don't keep our music kind of business and our music, you know, sort of presence, very at the forefront, that hurts us from culturally, economically, a whole host of things. So that has been an area of great conflict for us and the preservation folks. Yeah, and I think that's really where that outside the box thinking needs to come in, you know, preservation historically turned warehouses into apartments, turned theaters into bookstores, turned bookstores into theaters. You know, are there are ways, if it's a matter of retrofitting existing buildings to put technology in them, to add on to them, to have the kinds of amenities that are needed for a particular economic use. That's doable. But what we're all getting to here is that there are conflicts of sort of public interests. What is in the best public interest? One of the ones that we were experiencing a lot in Montgomery County and still are experiencing is a conflict between the need to build a lot of additional housing at all income points, but particularly affordable and attainable housing. And the issue of preserving both single family houses, but also individual designated historic sites in areas that are undergoing greater redevelopment. And, you know, I think that this is a topic that I think gave me a lot of thought to, it really is a challenge of different public goals, public interests. But I honestly continue to think that there are, maybe I'm just last half full kind of person, I think there are solutions. You know, really the whole preservation movement started in response to urban renewal. And urban renewal demolished neighborhoods, displaced people of color, created wastelands of, you know, very inhospitable kinds of neighborhoods. I have a great quote, James Baldwin was in Pittsburgh, where they did a lot of urban renewal. He was talking to a black teenager who had just lost his home and watched as his neighborhood was destroyed. And this teenager told Baldwin, I've got no country, I've got no flag. And I think that really gets to how, you know, the challenge of how do you balance quote unquote progress with creating and maintaining that sense of place and community. And I think preservation has an important role to play in doing that. So when I met people who said, oh, if we preserve this single family house, we are losing housing. I would argue, you know, you can put multiple units in a building that was a single family house, you can add on, you can build next to, there are always sort of outside the box kinds of design solutions that can help achieve those goals. Sometimes, you know, they are going to the public interests are going to butt up against each other. And sometimes one will override the other like, you know, perhaps in the case that Matt brought up about the cancer center, but, you know, I think that one thing that that we're wrestling with, at least in the Maryland DC area is this issue of how do we provide as much new housing as possible. And still maintain historic character and sense of place. Yeah, go ahead. To that end, I actually have a great article that I'm going to put a link. I'm going to ask our helper to put a link in about a project in Pittsburgh in what was called the Manchester neighborhood. And it's a really thoughtful article about how not only do we have a historic preservation, but also community development corporation and lots and lots of different tools have been used to maintain a historically black neighborhood to do historic preservation while keeping the residents of that neighborhood in place and adding additional housing that's going to be used in the future. So anyway, you'll see that link. It's something that I think is a really interesting topic about, you know, the back and forth of public interest. So I guess I want to shift it for just a second because I think that preservation can be an amazing economic and community development tool when properly used by planners. And so, Matt, I think you spoke a lot about that and I want to talk a little bit about that or provide an example of where that's worked for you. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll go ahead and share my screen here if I can really quick. Gwen, it's like we teed this up perfectly as far as that transition to the housing discussion. In looking at the Main Street, the National Main Street approach, it really is focused on making sure that these buildings that we're trying to preserve have an economic reason for being. And right now, across the country, folks are dealing with a housing shortage and a need for additional housing. But in some of our business districts, we're running up against the purest planning perspective that ground floor Main Street buildings should all be commercial uses. And so the example on the screen is a strategy from Victor Colorado, which was a gold mining community had as many as 55,000 people during the 1890s currently has like, I think, 745 full-time residents in the community. So as you can imagine, they have an amazing heritage of historic buildings from the gold mining days with lots and lots of investment and fantastic architecture. They have a fraction of the demand for commercial space that they did back in 1890. Amazon can deliver anything that you could possibly want. There are so many fewer people in this community needing services, the bars, the blacksmiths, the salons, the parlors, all of that is gone, except for a very small amount. So the community is struggling with having to deal with how do we preserve these buildings and residential seems to be one of the answers, at least in their community. And so the concept that they're exploring is this idea of minimizing the amount of ground floor commercial that's required on the first floor by zoning so that you're preserving that street frontage because you do want to have that commercial space up at the front with the storefront windows and keep that feel. But being able to convert the back of that ground floor into a residential unit where a caretaker could live, the shop owner could live, you're supporting both housing need, thriving business, and ultimately preserving the building because you've got somebody in there that's monitoring it day in and day out because they live there. So I think this is an example of really being able to take a planning principle of zoning that says you're commercially zoned, you can't have residential on the first floor and really starting to look at it from a rational perspective of what are we really trying to achieve and start to question ourselves a little bit to come up with more creative solutions. Well, I knew this was going to happen. I have like, you know, five more great questions based on our previous conversation. But I think it would be really good at this point to open it up to some of the questions that I'm seeing in the chat. So, I guess, well, I don't know if these two if I can make them into one question or not, but somebody asked that in Washington State, and what happened somebody just added a question and I lost that question. They're looking at doing away the legislature is debating removing design review boards for historic districts. And they were wanting to hear from you guys. How you think that might be encouraged without formal design review. Our, you know, our design guidelines that end all be all solution without human beings, I guess, I don't know. I think that's an absolutely horrible idea. And I hope that I hope that the community is able to maybe turn that in a different direction. I really, really believe in design review. I do not think that guidelines can cover every creative design solution that comes up. And I think, you know, even in the planning world, we did a new master plan for downtown Bethesda. We created great design guidelines and a design advisory panel. And one of the first major projects that came in was in direct opposition to some of the main recommendations from a design standpoint rather than stepping back this new building proposed sort of a giant outdoor room where the first 60 feet of the building stepped in, essentially. And but it was really well done by an internationally known architect. Beautiful design. And it was absolutely the opposite of the design guidelines. So you needed a group of people there to be able to look at it and say, wow, you know, this is the exception that proves the rule. We should absolutely support this project. I'm a huge believer in the design review process. I just, I think that I think that it is one of the tools that helps make planning and preservation actually work together. So here's another one. Somebody asked, is other than air rights concepts, can anyone speak to local policies that provide aspects of give and take about retaining existing buildings and allowing for increased density? I mean, maybe that's like Lucy's example. Yeah, I'm having to speak to that. So we use a form-based code downtown. We have scenarios where if you are, and usually it's in common ownership, if you protect a historic structure, you can bonus additional height. I think the problem that, you know, preservationists might mention is whether or not the scale is contextual. So here's an example and I'm happy to share this of sort of how we do that calculation. And, you know, we will require preservation of a structure to accomplish that. And so, you know, what you get in the end, this is a historic structure here was an old warehouse antiques sort of market. It wasn't listed, but it's just part of the fabric of the city that we value. And, you know, some would argue, well, that's not really contextual. That doesn't feel like the, the historic setting that this building was situated in. But we would argue you're downtown. So we should have development there. And you've protected a building that's important to our history. Wow. So there's so many great questions coming up here. I'm trying to do my best to surface up like a, just a range of them. So here's a different line of discussion where have any of the speakers notice that the term character. When referring to a neighborhood or communities becoming a loaded term. Where I've heard participants dismiss character as code word for race or class presidents, prejudice or exclusion. How do we. How do we, you know, as people who care about protecting character, you know, how do we address that perception? And the answer is, at least for me, yes, a lot of our folks who are very strong housing advocates have said that exactly what you just raised that, you know, character is not important. Housing is what's important. And, you know, we need to be much, much less interested in compatibility and community character. I, again, couldn't disagree more. I think that we saw, again, through urban renewal, the, the demolition of neighborhoods that had all those things, character and compatibility. And in their place, we saw wastelands of apartment blocks that people did not want to live in, did not ultimately feel comfortable living in. And we've now seen some of those starting to be demolished. So, you know, I do truly believe in, you know, the concept of place. And I think that that is a, a planning concept, not a preservation concept. And that you have to focus on creating places that people want to live. And that does involve compatibility and character and historic preservation and great new design, not that everything has to be in an old building. We coined a term in Montgomery County, we call parking lots to places. In our suburban communities, we had many, many surface parking lots. And we wanted to put the attention on those sites to convert those from parking lots to places to create great new communities. And I think that's not in opposition to historic preservation. I think it can be done in conjunction with historic preservation. So anybody else want to add to that, or should I move on to another question? I guess I would add and just say that, you know, based off of the context that you're looking at, there are likely solutions if we go back far enough into our history that address much of what's happening today. For instance, on the housing side of things. You know, it wasn't until more recently that we had as exclusive or single family focused neighborhoods as we do, they're go back in time and you can find those accessory units and the carriage units and things like that. So I think it's important for us to be able to use our historic assets and precedents to be able to address the concerns that are happening today and to really use that as a means to look for innovative solutions. Because ultimately, I think a lot of our historic solutions are the answer to some of the problems we're facing today. Very well put, I would say. So here's another one. So does anybody have any ideas how to better incorporate preservation into comprehensive plan updates or planning? And I'll just start with, in Chicago, I'm excited that the department, well, after I left, did some really interesting things. We had a like a industrial area, a market area that's like the hottest part of Chicago right now. And at the time that the department did a major upzoning of the area, they also instituted a landmark district for the most important buildings and it's been super successful. And I wonder if anybody else has any other examples of actually incorporating preservation into their comprehensive plans or even their area plans? So I'll share just quickly, taking a bit of a cue from Washington, D.C., we've been working on an urban design framework for National Davidson County that takes into account a lot of character defining historic resources such as the hillsides, river development, the bends and the like. And we're talking about including that sort of natural systems perspective as a basis for an urban design element in the comprehensive plan. Whereas in our current comp plan, we focus very much on the man-made world, if you will, major corridors and that's great too. We're not throwing that out, but putting them together. And so stay tuned, but that's something we're actively preparing today. So I have another great question somebody asked. So how do we educate our elected officials on preservation friendly and innovative planning policy? Often they're making critical decisions that have long-term effects, listening to a lot of developers. So this person said they'd love to hear what's worked for the panelists. Anything creative and engaging about how to really kind of put the other, you know, whispering the other ear? I'm happy to take that one. You know, working in the West, we often have very pragmatic elected officials and ultimately things coming back to what motivates your elected official. It's oftentimes tax base, jobs, sales tax and legacy. And really analyzing your audience for what is really their motivator is the key starting point to then identifying innovative ways to convince them to be more friendly towards your cause. So specifically in Wyoming, we've been successful linking things with economic development and the economic benefits of preservation, how we can generate jobs or tourism through those means. So I think that's definitely one area of success that we've had. The other area to look at is actually trying to get those folks out into the historic neighborhoods and experiencing those places because there's nothing like actually walking the streets, walking through a historic building to get those folks really understanding why you're passionate about preservation. Yeah, I want to sort of add to that. I think having people out there experiencing and looking at the buildings is the most important. I had a small historic district in a rural part of Montgomery County that we were working to nominate and get designated a number of years ago. And we had several county council members who were very property rights focused and very sort of hostile to historic preservation. But we got the hardest critics on a bus and we took them out there and fed them a great meal and took them to a number of historic sites within this small district. And when it finally came up at hearing several of the owners were there arguing against designation because of property rights. And one of the most hardcore county council members said, you know, I usually would vote with you. I usually would agree with your argument, but I was there. I saw it and it's historic. I can't deny it. It's historic and I'm going to vote for historic designation, even though you're, you're not in favor of it, Mr. So-and-so. And I was, I was pretty amazed by that and touched. I think the quality of place and the historicity of places really, really can affect even people who are not planners and architects and, you know, in the business. And so I think getting the elected officials out there is so important. Great. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to tee this up for Lucy to tell us how she thinks planners and preservationists can work together even better to revitalize places. Am I putting you on the spot? I just thought you'd do a good job with that. That's all. Oh, no, I think it's many of the things we've talked about today. I think it is defining common interests and principles. I think too often we as planners and our, and our colleagues and friends in the preservation offices focus very much on technical details because that's that, that those are the basis. That's the data that we evaluate sort of our work on. But I think sometimes we forget the principles part. And I think when you talk about the things that Gwen was just speaking about, about place making, about the value to a community, the value psychologically and the value economically, then I think it forces a little more of a creative outcome. I also think that helping to activate communities, regular people who care about it makes it easier to have a common framework because then you have constituents who are engaged. And so I think those are some strategies. Well, thank you. I think Rhonda, I think we're pretty much right on time for you to kind of conclude this off for us. Yeah, let me just thank everyone. Obviously we are on the right track. We've had a really rich discussion. We've had wonderful questions and comments in the chat. I think Alicia will have a lot to think about. This is the beginning of a partnership. So those comments, those questions, I think will help inform us on content that will be forthcoming. So thank you all for indicating your areas of interest. I'd like to again plug the webinar that we have next month. So part two of the series, May 19th, on effective preservation as an effective planning tool. And also did want to mention that to register for that, it might ask what divisive or chapter of APA you belong to. And if you're not an APA member, you can indicate the urban design and preservation division. This would be open to anyone who is also a national trust supporter. So to close, I'd just like to thank our panelists. Alicia, our moderator and thank all of you for participating. This has been a wonderful turnout. And we're really hoping that we expand this partnership in the years to come. So thank you all very much. Thank you.