First things first: Thanks to Jane Farrar and Debbie Shapiro, both members of Santa Fe's Historic Design Review Board, for responding to my column touching on design issues in terms of Santa Fe's historic styles ordinance [July 19:
]. For me, the point of an opinion column is to initiate a dialogue. A critical point of view regarding an issue or an institution isn't meant as a one-off volley but is intended as an opening. Writing a letter to the editor in response to something published in the media is a form of public conversation too little taken advantage of. Farrar and I only spoke over the telephone and, although we didn't exactly see canale to canale, I admire that she had some willingness toward dialogue, but Shapiro penned a letter [Aug. 2:
] and so deserves the brunt of my gratitude. The role and practice of the H-Board (Members
seem to prefer the acronym HDRB, but every time I see that in print it looks too much like BORG to me-the futuristic space automatons bent on "assimilating" everything into uniformity on TV's
Star Trek: The Next Generation
-an idea that, in proximity to the H-Board, is too terrifying to contemplate and, in my opinion, too close to home.) is
central to Santa Fe's identity and evolution and therefore a conversation that should always be alive in the community.
Shapiro defends the hard work and many hours each month that the volunteer H-Board dedicates to considering development in the Historic Districts. This is not something I've ever called into question but I'd like to emphasize that the amount of effort and energy expended on preservation issues by the H-Board and by city staff is clearly considerable. It's also plain from the general public attitude surrounding the H-Board and its decisions that serving is often a thankless and difficult task, so double credit is due for such hard work with such little gratitude. A great amount of hard work and commitment, however, are unrelated to measuring the community benefit of that work and certainly does not allow exemption from criticism. Shapiro's letter also emphasized that the H-Board has limited purview over certain sections of the city and that the board is in a constant struggle against big money interests wanting to cut historic corners, a dilemma Ferrar also lamented. It's clever of Shapiro to hone in on these two issues-they're central.
Santa Fe's historic districts-the areas under the H-Board's purview-are pretty uniformly charming and beautiful places. It's understandable that the H-Board wants to make it clear that it can't be held responsible for the hodge-podge of stuccoed boxes, vaguely Santa Fe-ish condo developments and brown-tinged interchanges and mini-malls that cling to regions beyond its scope. The same plan however, hatched in 1912, for engineering a style that would be attractive to tourists, led both to Santa Fe's preservation movement and to Santa Fe's rampant commercialism. The fact that developers outside of the historic districts use an almost comic iteration of Pueblo-revival architecture in an attempt to capitalize on the City Different protected by the H-Board isn't the board's fault, but the dynamics are two sides of the same coin and must be understood in relation to each other.
The city's choice in how to manage certain streets and intersections is, likewise, not something in the control of the board, but when such actions have a greater effect on the appearance and tone of our historic districts than the minutiae of window muntins and fenestration that often concerns the board, it's natural enough to wonder about the limitations, reach and meaning of the city having and enforcing a style ordinance.
And then there are questions about what unquestionably does fall under the purview of the H-Board. What special considerations approved the Ed Mazria-designed residence on Cerro Gordo that-all respect due to Mazria's initiatives in sustainable architecture-looks, as one neighbor told me, "like a 7-Eleven?" How about the El Corazon residential development next to the post office and the convention center? One city staffer involved with preservation told me that El Corazon was obviously sub-par as far as H-Board design standards, but that concessions must have been made because of the great need for residential in the downtown area. Of course one visit to the development's Web site (
) reveals the pitch: "Vacation Real Estate In Downtown Santa Fe." It's true that not all the units at El Corazon are designated as "vacation" units, but it's tough to perceive the H-Board's valiant stand against big money developers amidst the haze of generic apartment floorplans. The H-Board wanted to punt the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's understated renovation (ironically in the deep shadows behind the Hotel Eldorado) until the museum threatened to just move to Abiquiu or Española. Could it be money was the driving force behind that turnaround? And, of course, local-boy-made-good Tom Ford gets to build his more than 16,000-square-foot aerie on top of Talaya Hill while local architect Trey Jordan is shot down on his 1,500-square-foot residence. Wait-what's that smell? Is it money?
Let's compare the average annual income of people living in historic districts to people in, say, my "other side of the tracks" neighborhood. Let's detail how many Hispanic landowners, whose family histories provided the nuts and bolts of "Santa Fe Style," sold their east side properties when the property taxes got too high. Ultimately, like many things in a society full of legislation, our historic styles ordinance comes down to a question of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Is the H-Board still working to promote the spirit of our ordinance? Is that spirit still in line with Santa Fe needs and values today? When the ordinance was first debated, the losing group wasn't opposed to preservation, they were in favor of preservation being a part of a more comprehensive planning strategy for the entire city. Now that Santa Fe is finally getting around to a more holistic view of planning and land use, our historic districts need to be a cohesive-not an elitist-element of the bigger picture. It's not a disservice to the H-Board to say that the time has come to re-evaluate its role.
