Mapping the Direction of Right-Sizing in Saginaw
By Guest Writer on February 18th, 2011Written by Brenna Moloney
Saginaw's old train depot.
There has been much hype in the media and buzz in urban planning circles about right-sizing but to see the term explicitly defined is a rarity. Popularly, the term is used to refer to the process of bringing a city’s infrastructure and housing stock in line with current needs and declining population trends. It is largely hailed, by the multitude of politicians, government officials and business owners who invoke its rhetorical power, as a rational response to the productive collapse of the Middle-American city. Right-sizing, we are told, represents an effort to impose order on what appears to be a largely chaotic process. Right-sizing also involves a determination of what’s valuable and what has the greatest potential to rise from the ashes, once economic conditions have stabilized. Preservation professionals may play an increasingly important role in this aspect of right-sizing and planning.
North of the 675 freeway in Saginaw, there are neighborhoods with virtually nothing remaining. The old train depot is in this area and across the street from it, there are rows of empty business buildings, some late 19th Century Italianates, others mid-20th Century modern, all in an advanced state of decay. Behind the business buildings lies block after nearly empty block, some with houses so huge and so grand, they take your breath away.
An abandoned car wash near the train station.
Part of the challenge to implementing government programs that address right-sizing, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program, involve evaluating the current conditions of the city. It is not enough to say that there are huge swaths of emptiness and blight and a few “big old houses.” The conditions of each area should be evaluated, lest important historic resources be overlooked. The question “what buildings define our city?” should be asked, among others.
In Saginaw, the challenge is compounded by the fact that many of the historic district maps are outdated or inaccurate. Part of my time in Saginaw has been spent rectifying this problem. I have been going through each of the National Register Files, taking notes and making copies of the maps. I then compare them to the GIS maps on file with the city of Saginaw and correct the inaccuracies in borders and names. This is done with the cooperation of the city’s planner and GIS staff.
Empty storefronts.
The next step in determining conditions in Saginaw will be to conduct a resurvey of districts and potential districts. Since the National Register and local districts were established in the late 1970s, there has been a loss of integrity as the population declined and many buildings sat empty or were demolished. Though time will not allow an intensive level survey, I will be conducting a windshield survey with State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) historians over the next month. Our survey will include everything within the city limits and will take in to account eligible, non-eligible and potentially eligible districts. These survey results will be noted and recorded as an additional layer on the existing GIS and SHPO maps. They will be used to guide future decision making and determination as the city and state move forward with revitalization and right-sizing in Saginaw. They will used in conjunction with various neighborhood plans already in place and distributed to the Historic District Commission and other city commissions and departments. It is my hope that these maps will become dynamic, living parts of the right-sizing process.
In October, Brenna Moloney was hired by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Michigan Historic Preservation Network as a preservation specialist in the city of Saginaw, Michigan. She advises city and county employees on historic preservation, and works to educate the community on the importance and benefits of historic preservation by strengthening their Historic District Commission, offering workshops, and by starting a community advocacy group. Her employment was made possible through a grant from the Americana Foundation. Brenna will be blogging here about her experiences in Saginaw. Read her earlier posts here.
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February 18th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Have you, or would you ever consider using Google SketchUp and Google Earth to bring awareness to projects like the one in the story above?
I see a lot of people in the preservation industry using all types of GIS and mapping entities for these types of preservation projects, but not many using the tools freely given by Google.
I would love to do, what I do for a business for the purpose of preservation, but there doesn’t seem to be much awareness of what is available.
Just thought I would mention it.
February 18th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Jack,
I think you are absolutely right about the use of these tools being able to reach wide swaths of people by making data and images accessible. I would love, love, love to integrate Sketch Up and Google Earth in to my work in Saginaw. The only issue is in finding the time to enter all of the data, etc. These maps are primarily for government use so GIS was used. Also, we were building on existing data in already existing GIS so it wasn’t as time consuming as building everything from the ground up would have been.
February 18th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Jack,
This is a little rough, but I took a City historic districts PDF map, converted it to a PNG and placed it as an overlay in Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=43.424063,-83.951511&spn=0.059034,0.086603&t=h&z=14
It’s a challenge to zoom in and have to turn the layer off-and-on, but given what’s available online, it’s sort of interesting. Google should have a link on that page to download the KMZ file into Google Earth.
Source file from the City of Saginaw at:
http://www.saginaw-mi.com/Government/Departments/Development/zoning/historic/Historic%20District%20Map.pdf
February 18th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
I have real problem with the concept of “right-sizing” in that it presumes hopelessness and takes a fatalisitic and the “inevitable demise” of an area.
In 2008, our city of Cincinnati had written off my neighborhood, Knox Hill when we started our restoration. Since then we have brought in other preservation minded people to the neighborhood, many from out of state attracted by the architecture, developed partnerships with long time residents and the neighborhood is on its way back. We have fought demolitions by the city who use CDBG and NSP for demo only in our area. We complained to HUD and anyone else who would listen about the lack of Section 106 reviews and the city demoing property without acquiring the lots and having a plan.
The point is our neighborhood is on its way back. All done with private preservationist investment and done, in spite, of a city who wanted to demo a neighborhood because they assumed no one wanted to live there and federal money was available to do it. Our research found fascinating things about the rich history of our neighborhood and how and why it came to be, things that had long been forgotten and we are working on a registry nomination.
If we had come along just a few years later than we did and not being the ‘crazy, activist, preservationists’ we are, our neighborhood might have been “right sized’ out of existence. Even today we still must battle to save houses but the neighborhood is still here.
February 18th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Bravo Paul! Keep up the fight!
February 19th, 2011 at 11:06 am
As a resident of a transitioning neighborhood in Saginaw, I have to write that the coming of an individual such as Brenna has been a much-needed encouragement in a time when there *are* newly-interested people wishing to help save as much as we can of the remaining architectural heritage of Saginaw even as individuals who have been actively fighting to do so these last twenty-plus years are getting discouraged or tired.
The presence of an individual such as Brenna is of incalculable assistance in getting interested individuals unified and moving toward saving demolition-targeted architectural resources.
Her blog post discussing right-sizing and including pictures of what was once the Potter Street business district is a perfect example of one of the challenges we are facing.
I met an individual (Ralph Wolpart, I think I recall) a few summers ago who owns one of the empty buildings on Potter Street not far from the train station and the details this 80-something recalled from the time he was a grocery delivery boy on Potter Street were incredible:
The distinct smell of trains
(find two people who remember that – I dare you)
People streaming in and out of storefronts
making purhcases or deliveries
Sounds of horse-drawn vehicles on wood and brick pavements
The quiet that fell after the last train of the day
Ralph finished his coffee that day and shambled out leaving me very clearly in possession of an impression I could not shake that the Potter Street district must have been an amazing place once.
Now it is very, very quiet as if the last train of the day somehow led to an indefinate stall that left people trickling out over the decades and now the empty windows of the stores and depot look on nothing and no one. Well, almost.
It is interesting to note that even as the City looks upon this neighborhood as a problem to be dealt with there is a small, but very energetic, group people who live in the few remaining “big old houses” and the friends of these residents who see the remaining commercial buildings and homes surrounded by a tree-dotted meadowland as a place of opportunity.
That opportunity only exists as long as the neighborhood also continues to do so…