AJC Reports on Commission's Oakhurst Decision
Decatur Metro | October 17, 2007 | 1:12 amThe AJC provides a few more details on the Decatur City Commission’s decision to cut off city staff support and funding from the Oakhurst Historic District effort. Included are a few more quotes from Mayor Bill Floyd.
“Historic districts “are not the devil,” Floyd said. “But not everyone wants them. You want to do it to preserve history — not to keep out infill housing. You want to do it for the right reasons.”
Floyd said there wasn’t money in the budget to cover the cost of surveying Oakhurst homes and notify residents about the process. He also believes the preservation commission, which operates independently of the City Commission, erred when it expanded the district boundaries beyond the original proposal.”
In my own reaction to the commission’s decision, I explain why technically its too early to announce the death of the Oakhurst Historic District nomination. However, without the political support of the commission this nomination will almost certainly die.
Additionally, expanding the district boundaries may have been a political error, but it wasn’t necessarily a technical one.
Comments?
Every other LHD that has been created has been small, compact areas with a discernable history and architectural style. Two of the 4 are just single streets. The 1,000 plus home Oakhurst district would more than double the amount of homes covered under the historic preservation ordinance in Decatur. It really is a quarter of the city and contains many craftsman bungalows, but at least more than half of the homes in the proposed district are 1940′s post war housing, cape cods. That is not what was intended by the historic preservation code.
Another misconception is that the annexation area of the “City of Oakhurst” 90 years ago, really included what we now know as Oakhurst. Not really. The only real settled areas of Oakhurst back then were around what is the present day East Lake Marta station (on both sides of the RR tracks) now mostly demolished and some houses facing the RR tracks on College. There were no more than 125 residents of the City of Oakhurst at the time.
Not only was most of the rest of the annexation area uninhabited at the time of the annexation, there was no “Oakhurst Village,” but those areas were not really considered to be part of Oakhurst. They were just annexed around the same time. Other inhabited areas of the annexation area of what is now considered Oakhurst actually developed as having a seperate identity – one example is East End (south of Oakview) which was never incorporated, but was clearly not part of Oakhurst.
So, not only do I think it was not only a political error, but a “technical” one as well.
While the shear size of the proposed district is indeed massive, its not without precedent in the area. Though they obviously have more examples of high style architecture, Druid Hills and Inman Park are both as substantial as Oakhurst in terms of number of properties. The reason Oakhurst seems so large is because Decatur is a fraction of the size of Atlanta, and Oakhurst makes up a large % of the properties in the district.
Preservation ordinances do not discriminate based on style or type of construction. If they did, lawyers could strike them down citing “equal protection under the law”. “50 years” is the federal benchmark indicating when a building can be considered historic. So while all of those 1940s post-war “cape cods” may not be as ornate or attractive as the 1920s bungalows, they are just as eligible under the law.
In regards to the boundaries, perhaps the HPC’s mistake was that they moved too early. Instead of rejecting the original boundaries and immediately proposing new ones, they should have waited until a survey of the entire district had been completed to suggest new boundaries. Then they could show on maps, the development patterns (based on construction date/style/type) of the district and show why they had taken such a huge leap in district size. If the area within the annexation boundaries all had a similar development timeline and the same mix of styles and types, then I don’t believe their unpopular decision is indefensible.
So while all of those 1940s post-war “cape cods” may not be as ornate or attractive as the 1920s bungalows, they are just as eligible under the law.
That might be true, but I think that the intent of the preservation ordinance was for districts to have a consistent style, not a mix of turn of the century farm houses, 1910-1930 bungalows, 1940′s postwar housing, new construction from the past decade, and everything inbetween, all in the same district. They might be eligible as seperate districts, but not one.
With all due respect, you must not live in Oakhurst, and so must the members of the HPC. Because if you did, you would realize that Oakhurst does not have a consistent date/style/type without having to conduct a survey. There are at least 3 different date/style/types out of just the 16 houses on my block in Oakhurst. In addition there have been numerous surveys, posted on our blog, that describe in great detail the various development patterns and style of housing in South Decatur.
Since this nomination was submitted way back in January, it has been nothing but a comedy of errors on the part of the nominators and the HPC, except that it really hasn’t been very funny, because it has created wounds in the neighborhood that will probably never heal. Now that the City Commmission has made its thoughts on the subject matter clear, it is time for the nominators and the HPC to pull back and try to come up with some solutions to the real problems that Oakhurst still faces, even after a decade of neighborhood improvements that has made Oakhurst the great place to live that it is.
You are correct that I do not live in Oakhurst, but I am very familiar with the mix of styles and types of homes in the neighborhood.
Few historic districts around the country represent only a single style or type, all built in the same era. Most are an eclectic mix, which represent a large period of historic development. Ponce de Leon Court is all one development, while Old Decatur is a very diverse mix of construction dates/styles/types. Ponce Court is a pristine example of 1920s bungalows, while Old Decatur represents building patterns in Decatur from the 1860s through the present. Both are acceptable examples of historic development under any preservation ordinance, not just Decatur.
I agree that further energy toward this initiative at this given moment would not be productive, however I do believe that many of the issues addressed by a historic district are very real to some members of the Oakhurst community. In future years, the neighborhood will have to decide how it wants to cope with the positives and negatives that come along with gentrification.