A win for historic preservation is a win for St. Pete

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City council closed out 2024 by voting 5-2 in favor of an application to create a Local Historic District around Mirror Lake, creating the first new historic district in St. Petersburg since 2021.

The designation of Mirror Lake is a recognition that the protection and reuse of historic resources offers real value to cities and their residents.

The newly created district extends 200 feet from the lakefront and provides an effective tool to help inform future development. Designation encourages reusing historic buildings and more neighborhood-compatible development, while discouraging the demolition of historic resources. Designation also offers an array of valuable incentives for property owners, including exemptions from some building codes, density bonuses, tax abatements and priority ranking for state grants, to name a few.

Development in Mirror Lake will continue. Existing height allowances of around 125 feet remain in place, and all currently approved projects in the neighborhood will move forward as-is. While a Certificate of Appropriateness will be required for new development proposals, it’s notable that the overwhelming majority of COAs are approved at the staff level, meaning very few require a public hearing. In 2020, for example, 95% of COA applications received approval.

Beyond incentives for owners of historic properties, protecting and reusing our city’s historic resources is just good public policy. Published earlier this year, our report, “Keeping the Vibe Alive: The Impact of Historic Preservation in St. Petersburg,” helps to quantify some of these benefits.

Produced by Washington D.C.-based planning firm Place Economics and funded in part by the City of St. Petersburg, the Downtown Partnership, the Urban Charette, All Trades Historical, New Hotel Collection and several neighborhood and civic associations, the Vibe study looks at St. Petersburg’s historic assets from both a social and economic standpoint.

The report found that more than 60% of the commercial buildings along Central Avenue between 1st and 31st Streets were built before 1960, with 21% constructed in the 1920s.

These older commercial structures have both higher occupancy rates and house more local business than their newer counterparts.

Bars and restaurants clearly show a preference for Central Avenue’s historic attributes. While making up just 4% of all businesses in the city, 12% of St. Petersburg’s bars and restaurants are located on Central Avenue.

When it comes to quality of life, people really do seem to love all those allegedly outdated buildings. Nearly 70% of our Place Economics survey respondents reported visiting Central Avenue at least once a month, underscoring that Central is an important amenity for locals and their out-of-town guests. Having a walkable, pedestrian scaled (read: low-rise) historic “main street” is both a tourist draw and an important element of St. Pete’s quality of life.

Does Preserve the ‘Burg have an affinity for old buildings? Sure. But the study we commissioned is no outlier.

In 2014, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s report, “Older, Smaller, Better: Measuring How the Character of Buildings and Blocks Influences Urban Vitality,” looked at collections of older buildings in three cities across the country. The report found that, on average, blocks of older, smaller buildings perform better than areas with larger, newer buildings across a host of metrics, including providing affordable spaces for a diversity of local businesses.

St. Petersburg’s “Grand Central Master Plan,” published in 2023, recorded an overwhelming 66% of survey respondents who wanted to see historic buildings along Central restored and reused. The only higher-ranked priority was improving pedestrian crosswalks, at 69%.

It’s clear that Central Avenue’s historic buildings are key to its success.

Beyond Central, the Vibe study also found that existing older housing, whether smaller multi-family units or older single-family homes, are providing unsubsidized affordable housing in St. Petersburg. This naturally occurring affordable housing is found in the city’s older neighborhoods, which offer density and walkability. Using census data, the Vibe study shows that historic districts in St. Petersburg have the same or even slightly higher density as neighborhoods in the rest of the city. That’s certainly the case in Mirror Lake, where narrow streets and alleyways are jam-packed with smaller multi-family units and a mix of commercial and residential uses.

Some other findings from the Keeping the Vibe Alive study include:

• Residential and commercial property values in historic districts outperform those in the rest of the city.
• The adaptive reuse of existing buildings has broad support as a sustainability tactic.
• Many St. Petersburg residents identify character and sense of place as the reason they live here.

Increasingly, voices opposing the preservation of St. Petersburg’s historic character are out of step with not only the desires and tastes of residents, but an unambiguous body of empirical research that suggests historic main streets like Central Avenue, and historic neighborhoods more broadly, provide cities with important cultural and economic benefits.

One other finding from our study stood out: Less than 1% of land area in St. Petersburg is located within a historic district. That’s less than Miami, less than Nashville, less than Raleigh, and less than New York City, just to name a few.

So, while Council’s designation of Mirror Lake as a Local Historic District is a win for the city, the work to preserve our historic resources is far from over.

Manny Leto is Executive Director of Preserve the ‘Burg.