Utah Heritage Foundation

Ancestor Square returned to its roots, so to speak, when Nicki Pace and her husband Randall Richards (Painted Pony Restaurant) started the Downtown Farmers Market in 2008.  Of course buying local is the keenest sense of rural preservation and “localism,” or a place of meaningful interaction … where neighbors and local merchants share what's happening in their community.  Before Ancestor Square was a gleam in the eye of Nicki’s father, developer and historic preservation commissioner Brooks Pace; before it was the site of her grandfather Andy’s Big Hand Café; this Plat-of-Zion block was a veritable Eden in the redrock desert. 

Prominent pioneer plantsman and publisher Joseph Ellis Johnson (right) moved to St. George in 1865, cultivating trees, vines, and flowers and operating his nursery and seed business on the same block where Utah’s first snowbird, Brigham Young, started wintering in 1871 after acquiring the house begun by James Chesney in 1869 on the lot at the northwest corner.

AIA Central Utah Special Event

When: Monday, August 23, 2010

Cost: Free

RSVP: AIA Utah lgreen@aiautah.org, 801.532.1727

Time: Noon - 1:30 p.m. Please arrive early if you wish to purchase lunch.

Place: Novell, Inc., 1800 Novell Place, Provo, Mountain View Room of Cafeteria Building

Directions: http://www.eastbaycafe.com/ (West of main building)

Although Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R UT-3) is a member of the Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus, he has not supported appropriations for historic preservation.  Even – no, especially – fiscal conservatives should vote for funding that provides jobs and preserves our heritage.  After all, conservation at its root is conservative.

As a member of the Coalition for Full Funding of the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF), Utah Heritage Foundation has urged Congressman Chaffetz to support policies and legislation for historic preservation.  Click on the links below for three good reasons why the HPF should be supported: 

• The Historic Preservation Fund: An Unpaid Debt to Our Heritage
• Historic Preservation: A Significant Source of Local Jobs
• Historic Preservation: Support for Retrofits of Older and Historic Buildings

Panguitch folks have a new thing to be excited about.  Mark and Heather Childs from Las Vegas have bought the old Gem Theater. 

Through the Partners in the Field initiative for Central and Southern Utah, UHF staff is providing on-site technical assistance for historic research, rehabilitation, and business planning for the Gem Theatre.

We locals have a rare chance to bask in their enthusiasm.  Anytime one can find the real thing, real enthusiasm, it is like finding a gold mine.  It is someplace to visit and visit and take away riches, this time for the spirit.  This ambitious young couple and their two boys (in photo at left) plan to open an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. 

Groovacious, Groovefest. What is this, the 1960s?  Seems like it when you walk into Tim and Lisa Cretsinger’s record store – that’s right, record store – Groovacious in Cedar City, Utah. They moved their entire inventory of old vinyl and newer media from Keizer, Oregon in 2000. Tim vows they’ll never move again. 

His search for a stand-alone building with a cozy, lived-in feeling brought him to this former Lin’s Market a block off the main drag in the historic heart of Festival City USA. Only problem was, the owner was using the old Lin’s for storage with no intention of leasing. With his first load of inventory in town and a determination not to haul it back to Oregon, Tim sat down with his prospective landlord on a roll of carpet and convinced him that the old building would be more profitable as a record store than a storage unit.

Need funding for transportation improvements to enhance Heritage Tourism, provide pedestrian trails to historic places, or improve your historic downtown streetscape?  Check out this recent announcement from USDOT.

On June 1, the Federal Register included the revised announcement of the "Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery" or TIGER II Discretionary Grants.  The grants will be available for proposals for highway or bridge projects, public transportation projects, and passenger and freight rail projects.  The three types of grants include Planning Grants, TIFIA Payments, and Projects in Rural Areas. Of the available $600 million, $35 million will be available for TIGER II planning grants.

Projects selected for TIGER II grants should include a "livability component."  Livability improvements may include projects for improved biking and walking infrastructure and that provide improved connection between residential and commercial areas, among other things.  The U.S. Department of Transportation website includes frequently asked questions on the TIGER grants and a summary of the selection criteria. 

The pre-applications will be available through the DOT system no later than June 23, 2010 and are due July 16, 2010 at 5:00 pm EST.  Final applications must be submitted through Grants.gov by August 23, 2010 at 5:00 pm EST. Announcement of the projects will be announced no sooner than September 15, 2010.

Shakespeare was wrong.  The building’s the thing, and not the play – at least at the Casino Star Theatre.  Another act in the historic theatre’s preservation drama played out on Friday, May 7, 2010 when a motorist crashed into the adjacent His ‘n’ Hers store and careened into the scaffolding recently installed for the theatre’s façade restoration.

“About half the scaffolding was genuinely trashed, and what I thought looked pretty okay turned out to have been knocked so far off base, that the entire structure had to be taken down,” reported Diana Major Spencer, Executive Director of the Casino Star Theatre Foundation.  “The damage to the building is minimal, but has to be fixed before tomorrow's expected rainstorms materialize.”

Despite this latest incident, Major Spencer vows that the restoration of the Gunnison, Utah landmark will continue.  “We're so numb to setbacks by now that we just forge ahead.  This historic theatre NEEDS to be saved/ restored/ reinvigorated!”

Hyrum Lefler is a young mayor with a sense of his community’s history.  He and Leeds Historic Preservation Commissioners Martha Ham (at left) and LoAnne Barnes are determined to take full advantage of their Certified Local Government (CLG) status to save the places that matter to them.  At 27, Mayor Lefler remembers well what it was like to grow up immersed in the lore and landscapes of Leeds, Silver Reef and Harrisburg.  Saga of Three Towns recounts their story, a tale as colorful and dramatic as the nearby Red Cliffs and White Reef.  If not for this documentation, UHF’s Field Representative Susan Crook might have thought Mayor Lefler and other residents were spinning campfire yarns with their briefings on a recent fieldtrip to three of the town’s historic sites.

Full funding for the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF) was at the top of the agenda at National Historic Preservation Advocacy Week, with a slant toward job creation and energy efficiency.  Utah Heritage Foundation (UHF) is among the 171 members of the nationwide Coalition for Full Permanent Funding of the Historic Preservation Fund.

My service area as UHF’s Central and Southern Utah Field Representative covers parts of all three Utah Congressional districts, and I represent the entire state as Utah’s only current Preservation Action board member.  Appointments with our three congressmen (below with, l. to r., Fred Ferguson and Jason Chaffetz) and both senators gave me the chance to tell them about preservation success stories back home and ask them to help change the policy that allows Congress to appropriate only one-third to one-half of the $150 million authorized annually for the HPF.

The Hunter House restoration has been taken over by a SWATC team.  High school students enrolled in the Southwest Applied Technology College (SWATC) building construction class are repairing plaster, restoring a fireplace, and stripping and refinishing wood trim as part of the second phase of work on the historic home.  Other contractors began the restoration with repair of the foundation and re-roofing after the house was moved to the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum (formerly Iron Mission State Park) in 2005 to prevent its demolition.  Utah Heritage Foundation was instrumental in the advocacy process that led to arrangements for saving it.