District 9 - Rich Heyman
What is your favorite historic building or legacy business in your district, and why?
The Haskell House in Clarksville because it is one of the very few preserved buildings that testifies to the presence of Black communities that used to exist in different parts of what is now District 9, including in Wheatville, Bouldin Creek, along Red River Street, Horst’s Pastures, and Fellman Heights.
In 2024, Austin City Council adopted the Equity-Based Historic Preservation Plan to replace Austin’s 1981 historic preservation plan with a more inclusive, community-oriented vision for the City’s preservation program. Its proposed policies, programs, and tools aim to protect Austin’s unique heritage and shape an equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and economically vital future for all. The plan's future success will rely on buy-in from Council to execute its recommendations.
If elected, would you support the plan’s recommended policy changes, and the budget allocations needed to support them, to ensure that the future of preservation in Austin is proactive, collaborative, and accessible to all? Please explain.
I support the Equity-Based Historic Preservation Plan and would support the Historic Landmark Commission’s recommendation to add two staff positions for implementation.
Historic places play a significant role in Austin’s economy. South Congress, the Paramount Theatre, and Barton Springs are beloved to locals and tourists alike, as are legacy businesses like Broken Spoke, Cisco’s, and the Continental Club. These places support local jobs and local dollars in addition to embodying our local heritage. They define our identity and make Austin a destination in so many ways.
If elected, how would you leverage historic places to generate economic benefits for Austin?
We need a comprehensive, city-wide program to preserve iconic historic businesses, but any such program that uses city resources needs to include labor agreements to ensure that workers, especially service-sector workers, are paid a living wage, have benefits, and are given predictable, fair schedules. This is a different way to think about economic development, from the bottom-up, not—as it is typically understood today—as a kind of trickle-down process. Economic development must put money directly in the pockets of working people. That’s how the New Deal built a middle class.
In 2023, City Council officially proclaimed October as Legacy Business Month in honor of Preservation Austin’s inaugural Legacy Business Month passport program, which encourages Austinites to support participating businesses and broadly promotes their heritage. The city’s explosive growth has made protections and financial support for legacy businesses more important than ever. City governments in San Francisco and San Antonio have adopted ground-breaking legacy business programs to protect and support their cities’ legacy businesses through designation, education, and directly supporting businesses with financial resources.
If elected, would you support creating a similar program for the City of Austin? Why or why not?
Yes. As explained above, these programs need to include labor agreements. There is much more information available on the San Francisco program than on the San Antonio one. I would love to explore adapting the SF program to Austin, as part of a whole new approach to economic development that focuses on local businesses, employee ownership, and co-ops.
Preservation Austin, Austin Infill Coalition, and AIA Austin partnered on a Preservation Bonus that City Council adopted as part of HOME Phase 1 in 2023. The bonus exchanges increased development entitlements for preserving single-family homes built before 1961 to preserve more naturally affordable, historic-aged homes while supporting density. Since the adoption of this tool, however, fewer than 10 residential infill projects have used the Preservation Bonus. Research conducted by Cedar shows that expanding entitlements for Preservation Bonus projects, such as increased impervious cover and allowing four units per lot, could generate 10x as many housing units as the current bonus allows, and save more historic-aged houses from demolition (see report HERE).
If elected, would you support increasing entitlements for Preservation Bonus projects to preserve existing housing and support Austin’s affordability goals? Why or why not?
I would like to explore the possibility of “recalibrating” the preservation bonus program in combination with anti-displacement policies, as called for by CM Velásquez but not followed through on by the City Manager or Council. However, I am wary of increasing impervious cover, as we have seen a rise in localized flooding that has accompanied redevelopment in many places.
Historic resource surveys inventory historic neighborhoods and make recommendations on buildings and districts eligible for historic designation. Accurate and up-to-date surveys enable City staff, elected officials, and citizens alike to make decisions about which properties and neighborhoods ought to be protected. For example, in 2020, the Rogers-Washington-Holy Cross neighborhood successfully became Austin's first local historic district dedicated exclusively to Black heritage. This effort relied on data gathered in the 2016 East Austin Historic Resource Survey to define the district's boundaries and identify contributing structures. Without this survey, this historic district may not have been possible.
If elected, will you support annual funding for historic surveys and the City’s preservation office? Please explain your answer.
As someone who has done extensive, primary historical research in Austin, I believe this is an extremely valuable tool. I would need more information on the costs associated with these surveys and the structure of the program (how often updates are necessary, how extensive they are, staffing needs, etc.—information that I cannot find online) to determine an appropriate level of funding.
Local historic districts, established by City Council through historic zoning overlays, are one of the most important preservation tools available to protect Austin’s historic and cultural resources. The City of Austin’s existing historic resource surveys include recommendations for designating dozens of new local historic districts across our city. Proactive zoning efforts for historic districts are the most effective way to protect heritage in a city changing as rapidly as ours. Before 2021, a simple majority of City Council votes was required to establish a local historic district as long as 51 percent of all property owners within a proposed district’s boundary approved. Since 2021, however, state law requires a supermajority vote by Council to designate a local historic district if just one property owner within the proposed boundaries objects. Austin currently has only 8 local historic districts and has not designated a district since state law changed.
If elected, would you support the proactive designation of local historic districts that the City’s historic resource surveys identify as priorities? Would you do so even if a minority of property owners object? Why or why not?
There are at least 30 recommended historic districts in the various historic resource surveys and perhaps up to 50. There is not a list of publicly available priorities online. In general, I think the City should move forward and begin the process of systematically assessing the recommendations. Each case would need to be looked at, including the level of objections from property owners, but in general I would vote with the majority of those included and not let a few objections stand in the way.
As a member of Austin City Council, what is one policy or initiative you would enact to ensure the preservation of our city’s historic and cultural heritage?
Given the recent announcements of closings in the Red River Cultural District, I’m interested in pushing forward the development of a comprehensive legacy business program, as discussed above, perhaps using San Francisco’s as starting point.