District 9 - Zo Qadri
What is your favorite historic building or legacy business in your district, and why?
For me, the Paramount Theatre is one of those places that makes Austin feel like Austin. Generations of people have walked through its doors, and it remains a place where Austinites can come together and experience something special. What I love about places like the Paramount is that they remind us our city's history isn't something that belongs in a museum. It's something we get to experience and share with one another. As Austin grows, I want us to hold onto those places that connect us to the generations who came before us.
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.
Absolutely. I was proud to support the Equity-Based Historic Preservation Plan in my first term, and I want to see us follow through on the work.
When we talk about Austin's history, I always want to be mindful of whose history we are telling. For too long, we've been better at protecting certain buildings than recognizing the people and communities that actually made this city what it is. The contributions of Black and Latino Austinites, immigrant communities, working families, and small businesses deserve to be remembered and protected, too. I also believe that preservation and affordability have to go hand in hand. I've spent my first term fighting to make it easier to build housing because I don't want Austin to become a city where only wealthy people can afford to live. But I also don't want us to grow into a city that loses everything that made it special.
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?
There's a reason people come from all over the world to visit Austin, and it's not because we have the same buildings and businesses they can find anywhere else. It's our live music, our restaurants, our historic neighborhoods, and the places that have brought people together for generations. They're part of our identity, but they're also part of what makes our local economy work.
I want us to do more to support the businesses and cultural institutions that give Austin its character, including making sure they're connected to our tourism, arts, and small-business programs.
But I also think we have to talk about the people behind these places. The musicians, bartenders, restaurant workers, artists, and small-business owners who make Austin special deserve to be able to afford to live here. That's why I've fought for more housing and better wages during my first term and stood with workers like those at SXSW who wanted more from the festival they work so hard to uplift. I've also worked with RRCD and other cultural districts to pursue funding for artists and musician financial support programs. Preserving Austin's culture means making sure the people who create it can stay.
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, and I think it's long overdue. Every Austinite has that restaurant, bar, music venue, or neighborhood business that feels like a little piece of home. And we've all watched too many of those places close, not because people stopped loving them, but because it became too expensive to keep the doors open.
I don't want us to wait until another beloved Austin institution closes to talk about how much it meant to our city. I'd support creating a legacy business program that recognizes these businesses and actually helps them survive, whether through financial assistance, technical support, or connecting them with existing City resources. I'd especially want us to reach businesses in historically underserved communities that haven't always had the same access to support or recognition.
To Austinites, legacy institutions aren't just businesses. They're places where people have worked, celebrated, raised families, and built community. Once they're gone, we can't simply recreate them.
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?
Yes, and this is something I've already worked on during my first term. I co-sponsored the 2024 resolution to strengthen the Preservation Bonus because I believe we should be giving people more reasons to keep older homes standing, not making demolition the easiest or most financially practical option.
I've been a strong supporter of HOME and other housing reforms because I believe Austin needs to welcome more neighbors. We have to build more housing if we want our kids, our teachers, our service workers, and our families to have a future here. But building more homes doesn't have to mean tearing down every older home in the process.
If allowing four units on a lot or providing additional development flexibility means more families can live in a neighborhood while preserving an existing house, that's a win worth pursuing. We've already made improvements to the bonus, but the low number of projects using it tells us there's more work to do. I want us to keep improving the program until preservation becomes a practical choice for more homeowners.
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.
Yes. We can't protect the history of our communities if we haven't taken the time to learn it. One of the things I appreciate about historic resource surveys is that they give us an opportunity to tell a fuller story of Austin. Not just the history of our most prominent buildings, but the neighborhoods where families have lived for generations, where communities organized, and where people built lives despite being excluded from opportunities elsewhere in our city.
The Rogers-Washington-Holy Cross neighborhood is a great example of why that matters. I support ongoing funding for this work, particularly in communities that have historically been overlooked and in neighborhoods facing displacement. And I want us to make sure residents have a meaningful role in deciding what should be preserved. The people who know these neighborhoods best should help tell their stories.
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?
I would support moving forward with historic district designations when there's a strong historical case, meaningful community engagement, and clear benefits for the neighborhood, even if there isn't unanimous agreement. But I also want us to be honest about the challenges. If a longtime homeowner can't afford to maintain their property because of new requirements, or a family can't make reasonable changes to accommodate another generation living under the same roof, we haven't necessarily protected that community.
I've spent my first term fighting to make Austin more affordable because I want people to be able to stay in the neighborhoods they love. That's why I worked with Preservation Austin on amendments to compatibility reform measures to ensure historic homes were protected from density incentives. That's the same standard I bring to preservation. We should protect the history and character of our neighborhoods while making sure the people who built those communities can continue to call them home.
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?
I'd like to expand a real legacy business preservation program in Austin. I've lived here long enough to see how quickly the city can change. Some of that change has been exciting, meeting the needs of the students, workers, or new generations of Austinites who were born here and want to make their own memories. I've worked hard to make sure Austin can grow and welcome new people. But I've also seen places that meant so much to our community disappear.
I don't think we should accept that as the inevitable cost of growth. I'd like to work more to help our longstanding local businesses stay open, especially the small, independently owned businesses and cultural institutions that have served generations of Austinites. That means recognizing their contributions, but it also means providing practical help when they're struggling with rising costs or the threat of displacement which we're seeing play out in real time.
I became a dad during my first term on Council, and it's changed how I think about the future of our city. I want my son to grow up in an Austin that's welcoming, affordable, and full of opportunity. But I also want him to experience the places and traditions that made so many of us fall in love with this city. We shouldn't have to lose the Austin we love to build the Austin we need. I believe we can do both.