Adobe casita in downtown Tucson. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

When we first went house-hunting in Tucson in the early 1980s, our realtor thought we were crazy because we wanted a house with architectural style and wooden floors. Having lived in Columbus’ city core in an old Victorian-era brick double, we didn’t realize what a tall order this was in Tucson, our new home.

We spent several weeks driving around older neighborhoods in July in our AC-free Toyota Corolla with Judy (our chain-smoking realtor) and our baby daughter searching for style, affordability, and a house worth the sweat equity we were going to have to invest. We finally settled on a California Bungalow handyman special in the Pie Allen Neighborhood, priced at $34,000– the cost of some new vehicles today.

If Judy thought we were crazy while we were house-hunting, she probably really thought we were nuts when we bought that place, but we saw style and potential in that little house with the inviting front porch, the volcanic rock columns, the cozy fireplace flanked by wooden built-ins, and the large back yard– ready for a swing set and sandbox. Little did we know we were downtown pioneers before downtown was hip.

Thirty years later, many other urban pioneers have joined the struggle to breathe life into Tucson’s older neighborhoods and help downtown become livable and even fashionable.

At yesterday’s City Council Meeting, historic preservationists in Tucson won a major battle against the mini-dorm industry. The Council approved the Neighborhood Preservation Zone (NPZ) overlay for the Jefferson Park Neighborhood. The NPZ will restrict mini-dorm development by limiting the scale of new construction, making it more difficult to build a second story and limiting the size of a building to no more than 35 percent of the lot size. This is the second NPZ the Council has approved– the first being the Feldman Neighborhood NPZ in 2009, which developers are fighting.

This week, Tucson is hosting historic preservation conference, which will include a heritage discussion on Wednesday, June 22 at Hotel Congress.

Also, this week, a new guide to historic homes in Tucson was published.

Next week, at the June 28 City Council Meeting, the Council will consider a proposal to amend the sign code protect and preserve historic landmark signage older than 1975. Although I am a bit concerned about inclusion of “transitional” signage between 1961-1974 in this amendment, I think it is a worthwhile effort to protect the funky neon signs that mark Tucson’s past as a motor hotel haven.

With this volume of preservation activity, will Tucson save its unique architecture and sense of place? I hope so.  I don’t want developers to make Tucson into a place where there is no there there. I still remember the July thunderstorm clouds gathering over the old courthouse’s mosaic dome and the reflection of the Tucson Inn sign in the swimming pool that night in 1981 when we first visited Tucson.

Wooden doors in downtown Tucson. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Crumbling adobe home in downtown Tucson. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

El Rapido sign in downtown Tucson. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Fireplace with nichos in an old adobe home. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

The old Corner Market in downtown awaits TLC. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Inviting entrance to restored downtown adobe home. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

1036 E. Waverly St.-- an old house destroyed by Michael Goodman to build a mini-dorm. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

1920s Territorial style adobe in midtown demolished to build a 2010 house of ticky-tacky. (Photo credit: Pamela Powers)

Tucson has a long history of dozing history and later lamenting it. Two prime examples are the Convento, built in 1770 on the west side of the Santa Cruz River and covered by a landfill in the 1950s,  and, of course, the large swaths of Barrio Viejo, which were razed during an urban renewal frenzy to make way for the Tucson Convention Center.

The latest chapter in the let’s-knock-down-old-buildings-and-make-a-fast-buck book is the demolition of historic neighborhoods near the University of Arizona to build mini-dorms and high-rise student housing.

The destruction of Tucson’s historic architecture came to mind recently as I listened to To the Best of Our Knowledge, a thoughtful Sunday afternoon program on National Public Radio (NPR). This past Sunday they explored the idea of “place” and our deeply rooted connection to home and homeland.

Primarily the commentators lamented the homogenization of America, an America that has lost is “peculiarity,” its sense of history, its sense of place.  Cities and towns that were once distinctive due to the architecture, the ethnic populace, and the local food and culture have been turned into wastelands of fast food restaurants that serve the same food nationwide and strip malls filled with imported brick-a-brack.

This is what mini-dorms developers are doing to the Feldman and Jefferson Park Neighborhoods and trying to do to other older neighborhoods in Tucson’s core– grind up historic homes and spit out cookie cutter mini-dorms. The destruction is glaringly evident in the video below. Entire streets in the Feldman Neighborhood have been converted to mini-dorm ghettos of stucco and particle board.

Tucson City Council vote

Mini-dorm in the Feldman Neighborhood. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

1933 Territorial style burnt adobe in midtown. (Photo credit: Pamela Powers)

The latest battle in Jefferson Park’s war against the mini-dorm developers is the hearing and vote at the Tucson City Council meeting on June 21, 2011. The Jefferson Park activists have been working with the city to develop a Neighborhood Preservation Zone (NPZ) overlay to protect the architectural integrity of the neighborhood. Currently, mini-dorm developers are taking advantage of low housing prices, a slow residential sales market, and foreclosures to cheaply buy single-family homes on R-1 lots and replace them with mini-dorms that house 4-6 residents (plus girlfriends and boyfriends) in structures specifically designed for college students. The size, scale, and designs of the mini-dorms are not compatible with the historic nature of the bungalows and adobes in any of Tucson’s older neighborhoods.

Mini-dorm developers are destroying Tucson’s sense of place. It’s time for Tucson politicians to stop cutting deals with developers who want to destroy our history to make a fast buck.

The Tucson City Council should approve Jefferson Park’s NPZ and work with mini-dorm developers to find locations– outside of historic neighborhoods– for multi-unit student housing. (Here’s a hint: there are several vacant car dealership lots on Speedway and abandoned businesses on Stone and First.) Leave our historic neighborhoods intact– or live to regret it. Do we really want old town Tucson to look like Oro Valley on steroids?

Pop Quiz: Which of the above structures has a sense of place and history? The one on the top or the one on the bottom?