Main Street Journal: Feature Article: Rescued: The Fight to Save Our Historic Buildings

The following article is taken from the February 2009 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

Rescued: The Fight to Save Our Historic Buildings
By: Lance Allan

As far as American cities go, Memphis is high on the list for those with historic significance. After all, the Bluff City has about 11,500 buildings currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a number that ranks the city sixth for the most historic properties behind New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, according to Memphis Heritage Inc.

But preservation isn’t always about rankings and lists. And Memphis Heritage, an organization founded in 1975 with the goal of preserving Memphis’ past and its architectural heritage had a unique opportunity recently when the Atlanta-based fast-food chain Chick-fil-A showed interest in adding a new restaurant on Union Avenue in Midtown. Only this location, at 1978 Union, wasn’t going to go on a vacant lot. Memphis-based Cumberland Presbyterian Church had been in the process of moving east. They sold the Union Avenue property, home to the church’s headquarters, to Chick-fil-A last year.

Chick-fil-A had its eyes set on the archives and administration building, a structure that was built in 1951.

June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage, said she wasn’t surprised by the rumors about Chick-fil-A coming to Midtown. While the restaurant wasn’t looking to buy a historic church sanctuary and tear it down, there were concerns about the prospect of seeing a historic building come down all the same. The problem, at least in the eyes of many preservationists, was that the property is one of only a handful remaining on Union with any kind of historic significance.

“It was important for us to keep some significance of that (Memphis-based church) there,” West said. “Even though this is not a church building, not a sanctuary, this was built as a headquarters and archives building for the national church.”

West said after Memphis Heritage discovered Chick-fil-A had genuine interest in the property, the group mobilized with an e-mail campaign. Concerned Midtown residents and stakeholders contacted the restaurant, mostly with positive notes.

“I have to say that during the process Memphis Heritage could not have done this by ourselves,” West said, affirming the importance of having a united front in any preservation effort. “It took the community’s involvement. We were the catapult that threw it out there to the general public and people interested in Midtown took it. We are very grateful to the community and individuals who got involved and sent letters to Chick-fil-A. For the most part, the letters were very positive. I have a lot of the letters. Most everybody said, ‘We really admire your company,’ ‘We know you work with good ethics,’ ‘You’re closed on Sundays and we admire that,’ ‘We really want you in our neighborhood but we want you to communicate with our local people.’

“There were one or two who said they’d never eat at Chick-fil-A, but for the most part things were very positive.”

West and members of Memphis Heritage continued an open dialogue with Chick-fil-A executives. The fast food chain even granted a Memphis Heritage request to have four of its volunteer architects walk through the church building to see for themselves if it could be reused or if it indeed had to come down.

“We walked the building and looked at it and made the decision that it would be very difficult to adaptively reuse it for a restaurant. We didn’t know that until we went in,” West said. “Once we saw the inside and realized the way the walls were set we realized there was no way it could be adaptively reused for Chick-fil-A’s use.”

So the current plan – which Memphis Heritage is in full support of – is that the church building will come down while the exterior wall that fronts Union is kept intact. It will serve as a wall of sorts for outdoor seating while blocking off the parking lot from the street. It’s not a complete happy ending for preservationists, but West said it’s the best-case scenario.

“Most everybody thinks it’s better than nothing,” West said. “Pure preservationists probably find fault in it because we weren’t able to save the whole building, but in my opinion, what we were able to do is save a streetscape so you’re not going to look into a parking lot. It’s going to shield the parking lot.”

Until construction actually begins and the restaurant starts serving its famous chicken items, the project isn’t a done deal. But it’s well on its way, working through the various government approval processes. The project has to go before the Memphis City Council twice, the first of which was set to occur at the end of January. Memphis Heritage was in full support of the company earlier in January when it went before the city-county Land Use Control Board to request a variance for how the restaurant would be situated on the property.

The working relationship between Memphis Heritage and Chick-fil-A has shown how good the preservation process can be. Of course, it does help to work with a willing partner.

“I would say had it been any other fast-food restaurant, we wouldn’t have gotten it done,” West said. “I may be overstating that but I really believe that’s what made this possible. What they do as a company, their compassion and family atmosphere.

“We hopefully expressed to them that we felt working with us on this that it would come back to them threefold. We have people who are very excited about Chick-fil-A coming to the neighborhood.”

While this story seems to be headed toward a peaceful and happy ending, not all preservation stories in Memphis have fared as well. Memphis Heritage dates to 1975, but the fight to save the city’s historic structures dates much earlier. Ed Williams, Shelby County’s historian, recalls some of those fights, and failures.

“The failure of the effort to save the oldest railroad terminal in the U.S. in continuous use at the time was the Memphis and Charleston Railroad depot,” he said about the Downtown train station that was lost in the early 1960s. “The forces of progress decided it needed to go, despite protests. They got it demolished at 3 a.m. so no one would be on hand.”

Williams, who has been the county’s historian for 15 years, said an early loss came in the 1930s when two Memphis homes of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, were demolished.

Memphis is actually full of properties teetering on the edge, so to speak. Some seem to be going nowhere – neither in the direction of redevelopment or that of being torn down. The Sterick Building, for example, is the city’s fourth-tallest building. Built in 1930, it has sat vacant since the 1980s.

Several attempts have been made to no avail to redevelop the old Tennessee Brewery building that overlooks the Mississippi River near the South Main Historic Arts District. And the Sears Crosstown building continues to sit vacant.

But where there are unknowns, uncertainties and disappointments, there have been plenty of positives. And one needs look no further than Downtown, a neighborhood chock full of buildings of all shapes, sizes and ages that have been refurbished and converted into residential and small commercial uses.

Victorian Village, Williams said, is one of the strongest examples of preserving history in Memphis. The neighborhood of homes built in the 19th century sits on the eastern fringes of Downtown.

But while Memphis has plenty of success stories, there is still plenty of work that remains. And it can’t all be done by Memphis Heritage, though the group is certainly a start.

“The private sector has a better chance of success than the government,” Williams said. “One example, because someone was willing to take the lead, is the Lincoln American Tower. That’s a beautiful example that has resulted in saving a very attractive building.”

And saving Memphis’ historic structures continues, one building at a time.

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