AUSTIN (AP) The Austin-based nonprofit group that manages the city’s historic district wants to help make those homes more affordable for buyers.
They include homes built during the first half of the 20th century, from 1910 through the mid-20th century and from the 1930s.
The group wants to make the district’s buildings more affordable and help them stand on their own as historic sites.
The group is looking at a wide range of options, including demolishing some of the more than 1,500 historic homes in the district.
Austin-based Historic Austin Group spokeswoman Debra Schmitz says some of them could be saved by removing them entirely, or they could be renovated to allow for a greater number of visitors and visitors of all ages.
She said there’s not much that can be done to protect older structures from the elements.
“There’s a lot of places that would have been destroyed,” Schmitzz said.
Schmitz said Austin-area developers, architects and historians are often the ones who would rebuild and save a historic building.
That’s because the structure is often built on a hilltop or embankment.
She said the group is not saying that all homes are worth the effort to make them more affordable.
But it does say some homes could be made more accessible by making them less historic.
A city of Austin ordinance says homeowners can’t demolish historic structures or put up signs warning that they’re historic, unless the homes have been deemed historic by a city council.
We don’t think that’s something we should do, said Austin architect Joe Bautista.
Bautistas building was part of the historic district that included buildings built during World War II, and the building was sold to the city for $3 million.
He said there are some historic buildings that are not really historical.
Bautistas work was destroyed in an explosion that rocked the building in the late 1970s.
He says some buildings in the historic districts have survived, even though they have no historic significance.
Historic Austin is currently seeking to demolish one of its older buildings on East Fourth Street and a building at the intersection of Fifth and Sixth streets.