There's been some tough news locally this year in the historic preservation arena, with rising concern about development along Milledge Avenue and its impact on the historic nature of that corridor, not to mention the fire that destroyed the interior of the Georgia Theatre in downtown Athens.
So perhaps there's little comfort to be taken in the fact that no local buildings or places were included on the 2010 list of Places in Peril, an annual compilation by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation of historic structures and locales that are threatened by neglect, possible demolition, a lack of maintenance, inappropriate development or misguided public policy.
Previous years have seen structures or locations with local connections, or in the immediate area, included on the Places in Peril list. In 2008, the University of Georgia Marine Institute's greenhouse and administration building on Sapelo Island were included among the imperiled places in the state, and in 2006, a historic district in nearby Hartwell was on the list.
As sad as the annual listing is - insofar as there seems to be plenty of buildings and places that can qualify to be placed on it - the Places in Peril program does suggest a means by which the local historic preservation community might be able to mount a stronger effort to keep Athens-Clarke County more aware of, and tethered to, those parts of the built environment that are worthy of preservation in terms of what they can say, and show, about the area's history.
The default position in this community, including the editorial page of this newspaper, has been to criticize the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation - perhaps the most visible instrument of local historic preservation efforts - for always seeming to jump in at the last minute, or after the fact, when a building of some historic value is either threatened with demolition or actually demolished.
In truth, that's been an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction that discounts or ignores the good work the ACHF does - through HandsOn Athens, a regular effort to keep homes in historic areas in good repair, and through various tours and other events - to at least try to make people aware of the historic resources around them, and the importance of keeping those resources intact.
What's been missing in local historic preservation efforts, at least in terms of creating a wider community understanding of what might be worth preserving, and what the community could lose without losing an important contact with its past, is some sort of listing of resources that shouldn't be allowed to fall to the bulldozer, to outright neglect or to public policy, particularly with regard to changes in planning and zoning regulations.
Whether it's something the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation might want to take on, or whether it might be wise for preservation-minded community residents to create some new entity to work on it, a local version of the Georgia Trust's Places in Peril program might be an effective tool for giving the community a clear look at the state of its historic buildings and locations.
An annual listing of those places that might be in danger of being lost, along with an explanation of the threat each is facing, and a set of possible actions the local government, the preservation community and the wider community might take to save or reduce the danger to each place, could go a long way toward making historic preservation a more intentional, and possibly more successful, process for ensuring the local built environment continues to speak to the present about the past.
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