The Portland Historic Landmarks Commission on Wednesday presented to the City Council a 20-page report highlighting what it believes are the top issues facing historic resources in the city.

“I wanted to highlight the folks in the city of Portland and their endeavors to preserve the built environment,” Commission Chairman Kirk Ranzetta told the council, which accepted the report with a 4-0 vote. “The bottom line is the folks of Portland individually take efforts to preserve our heritage seriously.”

Nevertheless, more than 1,442 historic buildings were demolished between 2012 and 2017, according to the report. Factors ranged from the city’s need for more, higher density housing to safety issues regarding unreinforced masonry.

The need for a balance of preservation and new housing is the most contentious issue the commission faces, according to Vice Chairwoman Kristen Minor. The commission does not oppose higher density in historic districts, she said.

“There have been a lot of unfair accusations (about the commission),” she said. “It is the zoning that prohibits density.”

Many demolitions can be avoided via incentives prioritizing adaptive reuse, Minor said. The commission’s report argues for creation of both city and state government tax credits to help entice developers to prioritize reuse instead of demolition. Those credits could be paid for through system development charges, according to the report.

Such incentives helped save the Bronaugh Apartments. The 112-year-old building was in danger of being demolished before low-income tax credits helped pay for a renovation. Now, the three-story building offers 50 apartments for residents on fixed incomes. The project won a Charles L. Edson Tax Credit Excellence Award in the HUD preservation category

However, some city commissioners warned against tax credits becoming a panacea to save historic buildings.

“There are real trade-offs, and it is naive for us to assume there aren’t,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said. “The real hard part is drawing the lines. There is a trade-off between preserving a historic asset and the value of commercial space.”

Wheeler said he has had conversations about protecting historical assets, a housing emergency and safety involving unreinforced masonry (URM) all within the last year.

“At some point these three conversations have to come together,” he said.

Many older buildings in Portland were constructed with masonry that would not hold up in a major earthquake. Retrofit costs can be significant. Nevertheless, such efforts are important to preserve structures, according to the Historic Landmarks Commission’s report.

“These places help reorient people and remind people where they are and who they are (after a big seismic event),” Minor said. “We need better solutions and incentives for URMs.”

Deciding which structures are worthy of seismic investment is the tough call.

“Not all unreinforced masonry should be preserved and protected,” Wheeler said. “Some of it is junk and should probably be scraped. Others are assets that are literally irreplaceable.”

Nearly everyone at Wednesday’s meeting agreed that the city’s Historic Resources Inventory (HRI) needs an update. The previous full count of buildings that could qualify for historic status occurred 35 years ago.

“The HRI provides a new set of eyes on resources and looks at them in a new light,” Ranzetta said.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz was the most upbeat about the report’s suggestions for meeting the challenges facing historic preservation efforts.

“We can accommodate density without destroying our neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s not either or. We can do it all.”

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Work within Portland bureaus to achieve goals set forth in the city’s is proceeding, and the Historic Landmarks Commission on Monday was given a chance to weigh in.

The commission got a look at a draft of a letter that the Bureau of Development Services (BDS) will send to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) outlining possible ways to revamp city codes to encourage owners to not tear down residential buildings in some of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods.

“This letter is a work in progress,” BDS planner Benjamin Nielson said. “It is a starting point for the final letter that we will be submitting on (the commission’s) behalf to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.”

Three main goals are being pursued via the proposed code changes. The first is to preserve not only properties listed on the city’s Historic Resources Inventory, but also those that add to the character of a neighborhood. The second is to define eligibility for incentives by targeting structures age 50 or older. The third is to determine the neighborhood compatibility of cottage clusters and the allowance for two detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as well as provisions for additional floor area ratio (FAR).

Most of the conversation on Monday centered on whether the incentive eligibility would be too broad. By making any house older than 50 years eligible for the incentives, regardless of historic status, nearly 70,000 of the 80,000 housing structures on the east side of the design overlay zone would be eligible for the incentives. The design overlay zone in question includes much of the inner city.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing to offer that incentive path to those older houses,” Commission Vice Chairwoman Kristen Minor said. “But by setting a number are we getting houses that are worthy of preservation?”

The 50-year mark was based on a number used by the National Park Service for eligibility on its National Register of Historic Places. There is nothing in city code that specifies the age a property can become historic.

“I think that 50 years is kind of arbitrary, but it is a starting point,” Commission Chairman Kirk Ranzetta said.

“I would just offer that it is helpful to have that as a basis,” Commissioner Wendy Chung said. “At least the 50 number corresponds to some objective number, even if it is not ours. I don’t think we should pick a different number.”

Defining eligibility for incentives is tough because Portland lacks a comprehensive inventory of historic residential structures, Ranzetta said.

“It’s incredibly difficult to craft a code to protect a resource we don’t know anything about,” he said.

The commission indicated it is more comfortable with the idea of cottage clusters and additional ADUs within the design overlay zone.

The letter will be revised before being presented again to the Historic Landmarks Commission for approval. The final version will be sent to BPS, which will incorporate it into proposed code changes. They will go before the City Council as part of the Residential Infill Project.

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Under current Portland city code, owners can remove a property from the Historic Resources Inventory (HRI) and immediately apply for a demolition permit. In other words, Portland has no way to protect its historic structures.

City officials are aware of the loophole allowing building owners to circumvent a 120-day notification period for demolitions, said Brandon Spencer-Hartle, the historic resources program manager for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. But any potential change would not be fast-tracked, he added.

Spencer-Hartle noted that this week he was in staff meetings where closure of the loophole was discussed. But BPS is tackling other planning issues that take precedence, he said, and any change to city code must first go through a public process.

At the earliest, Spencer-Hartle said, a proposal to fix the loophole could be ready for review by BPS staffers by late summer and then considered by the Portland City Council by this fall.

“One of my misconceptions before coming to work for the city was that the City Council could just whip up a code,” Spencer-Hartle said. “But even working to see how fast we can put this together, that timeline is most ambitious. It could be faster or it could be slower.”

It’s too slow for Peggy Moretti, executive director of Restore Oregon, which works to protect the state’s historic structures. One that could be at risk is a former firehouse at 1425 N.W. Glisan St. The building is listed on the HRI, but it could be removed by a prospective new owner and then demolished.

“The city has committed to closing the loophole, but it’s taking too dang long,” Moretti said. “In the meantime, other things (besides the firehouse) will be removed.”

In 2002, when the city changed many of its codes, it deleted a 120-day waiting period before demolition of a historic structure could occur, Spencer-Hartle said. That might have been an accidental oversight, he said.

“There is no evidence there was an intention to allow (historic) properties to be removed without delay,” he said.

The 103-year-old ex-firehouse in the Pearl District can be removed from the HRI at any time, Spencer-Hartle said, because of a state law passed by the 1995 Oregon Legislature. It requires owners to give permission for buildings to be added to historic registers, undercutting cities’ ability to identify and preserve historic structures. Oregon is the only U.S. state with such a law, according to Moretti.

Portland’s HRI has not been updated since 1985, and there are no plans to pursue an update because the state law requiring owners’ permission would make it an all but impossible task, Spencer-Hartle said.

The city cannot take a political stand on the issue, he added, because it is state law.

As things stand now, Spencer-Hartle said, if the owner of a building requests a demolition permit before asking for its removal from the HRI, the 120-day delay would go into effect. But if the request for a demolition permit is made after removal from the HRI, there would be no delay.

Only listing on the National Register of Historic Places can prevent demolition. But even if a building is listed on the national register, the owner can push the Portland City Council to allow demolition, said Val Ballestrem, education director at the Architectural Heritage Center.

“We are really hamstrung with preservation of buildings or saving buildings from demolition,” he said. “Owners make more money by redeveloping and we are essentially seeing really historic and architecturally significant buildings torn down.”

AHC board Vice President Steve Dotterrer is heading an advocacy committee that will push for changes to state law regarding the owners’ permission requirement for buildings’ historic designations, Ballestrem said. But it won’t be an easy sell, he added.

“It’s really interesting how Portland is a super liberal city and yet when it comes to property, people say, ‘It’s my property and you can’t tell me what to do,’ ” he said. “We’ve become just as libertarian as anyone else in the state.”

No application for a demolition permit has been submitted for the ex-firehouse, Spencer-Hartle said. But that could change any day, he added.

Sam Rodriguez is a senior managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust, the potential new owner of the ex-firehouse. The firm has entered into a contract with the current property owner, but the sale isn’t finalized yet, he said; redevelopment plans aren’t set yet either.

Due diligence is still being performed, Rodriguez said, but he expects the sale to be finalized in two to three months.

“We’re evaluating all the options and one of them is demolition of the building,” he said. “That’s very likely, but we don’t really have final plans at this point.”

The property remains on the HRI, but can be removed after the sale is final, Rodriguez said.

“The list was done a long time ago and doesn’t protect it from demolitions,” he said.

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