News

How the West is being lost – Ketchum, Idaho, struggles to preserve its century-old heritage

Bob Rosso has had to make many accommodations to the past during the past three decades as he expanded his backcountry equipment retailing and rental business from its beginnings in the 1882 home of one of central Idaho’s pioneers.

By BOB FICK
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/189851_historichomes08.html

"There aren’t many of these old buildings left," the owner of the Elephant Perch in Ketchum said. "It would have been easier to knock it down. But we wanted to retain the history."

Rosso’s view, however, is being increasingly challenged with the disappearance of other buildings that mark the town’s beginnings as a mining center and its transition into an early 20th-century livestock hub — victims of Ketchum’s evolution into a playground for the wealthy where property values are rising 10 percent a year.

"In the past three years, we were amazed at how many buildings that were on our historic inventory were gone," said architect James Ruscitto, chairman of the newly reconstituted Historic Preservation Commission.

"Property values have gotten to the point where they’re knocking down almost new buildings for development," Ruscitto said.

The problem isn’t peculiar to Ketchum and the world-renowned Sun Valley resort just a mile down the road. Critics say it haunts the entire West, where rapid population growth has fueled skyrocketing property values that jeopardize historic properties and the region’s way of life.

Seattle faces slightly different challenges. It already offers developers and property owners options to preserve important buildings, but it lacks enough strong advocates, according to Walt Crowley, executive director of HistoryLink.org.

In Seattle, owners can transfer development rights, essentially development potential, from a historic site to another location, allowing developers to build higher or create denser new buildings, Crowley said.

"There is an escape valve," the head of the Washington history Web site and resource said. "An escape valve to relieve development pressure on historic properties."

The problem in Seattle is the absence of advocates for Seattle’s aging but important buildings, Crowley added.

In fact, the preservation advocate at Historic Seattle, Heather MacIntosh, recently left to become president of Washington, D.C.-based Preservation Action.

"We have the tools. Nobody is using them," Crowley said.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of historic sites in jeopardy is long and varied. It includes the Willits, Calif., ranch where the horse Seabiscuit was rehabilitated in 1939.

It contains inner-city churches, highlighted by the fight in downtown Seattle to put a high-rise office tower on the site of the century-old First United Methodist Church.

The reality of value versus history is no more evident than in Ketchum, where land in the city core goes for around $125 a square foot.

The Bald Mountain Hot Springs Hotel, which features a pool filled with hot water moved through wooden pipes from a natural hot springs two miles away, was a central attraction after it was built in 1929.

However, the lodge was sold off and moved to a ranch 100 miles south, and the cabins were being removed to make room for an 80-room hotel when the project’s financing fell through. Now the lot is back on the market for a reported $6 million.

Some local history enthusiasts are trying to come up with a plan to at least save the cabins that are left, possibly converting them to office space.

While there may be the odd wealthy patron who steps in to save a building because he has no need for more cash, real estate agent Dick Fenton says those cases are few.

"The difficulty is you’re a landowner sitting on land that’s worth so much," he said. "You need incentives. It has to be in the interest of the landowner. He says, ‘All my money’s tied up in this funky little house that you call historic and I call barely habitable.’ "

There are limited incentives — a federal tax credit and some grants. But Ruscitto and others agree that there isn’t enough money to offset the cash that development typically generates.

Preservation has to be something done for its own value, they said, and fostered by community support for history.

Some communities have used zoning ordinances to prohibit demolition, although Fenton believes that in the case of many old buildings, that kind of restriction on private property rights would not hold up in court.

One viable option, he said, is letting landowners sell their development rights to others, as they can in Seattle, who could then increase the density of their developments beyond what would otherwise be allowed. But that market has yet to take hold, he said.

Ruscitto believes that there are other ways to accommodate development plans for the sites of old buildings without destroying the buildings. They could be converted to contemporary uses such as stores or offices.

Or zoning laws could be used to require at least some investigation into an old structure’s history before demolition is considered.

Owners could be advised on any incentives to help offset gains from demolition.

P-I reporter Paul Nyhan contributed to this report.

Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.