Utah Heritage Foundation

This morning it was reported in the Salt Lake Tribune that The Leonardo will go before the City Council tonight with a request for a $600,000 loan to pay salaries.  Really?  They’ve spent all their finances on the capital project and now don’t have enough to keep their staff.  I’m not sure this bodes well for the future.

The preservation ethic that’s been established at The Leo also doesn’t bode well for the future.  The city received a grant from FEMA to do seismic stabilization to the former library building.  Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, providing these federal funds required that impacts to the building from a new seismic system be reviewed by the Utah State Historic Preservation Office and interested consulting parties, of which Utah Heritage Foundation was one.  Utah Heritage Foundation helped make the case that the former Main Library is a significant structure that is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places even though it had not reached the 50 year age mark.  We spent more than two years in intensive discussions with representatives of The Leonardo, FEMA, state emergency management, and Salt Lake City Public Services and Engineering.  On several walk-throughs of the building, we collectively identified the character defining features of the building to be preserved including the large plate glass windows, cast concrete panels, sculptural mural on the south side, leaflights, escalators, the auditorium, and several areas of extensive wood and marble paneling.

After many meetings, an agreement was reached about the best type of seismic system to be installed in this historic structure and how to lessen its impacts to the character defining features of the building.  These features were then protected during the renovation in order to satisfy the FEMA grant.  At the time of a walk through to see a “nearly completed” project (April 2011), we saw that all of the historic features were intact and in good condition.  The Leonardo indicated that they were within 1-2 months of opening and we walked away feeling good that the public would have a chance to experience the former library in a new way.  It’s exactly how the Section 106 process should work successfully.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there.  As soon as FEMA signed off that the city (The Leonardo’s landlord) had met the obligations of the federal grant, plans changed and the museum took a path to reverse much of the diligent work of people for several years.  The Leonardo has covered several of the marble and wood paneled walls with new walls, painted much of the first and second floor interiors black (while the original was white), and removed leaflights in the public spaces (see photos below).  We believe that more exterior doors that don’t meet the original design pattern will also be inserted.  Could these changes be part of the reason for the continual delay in opening?

We’re hoping that all of these alterations after the fact will be reversible, but we won’t know until it opens in October.  Still, there was a significant investment of taxpayer money put into the project.  Now, there is more taxpayer and donor money being poured into this project to undo what we’ve already paid for.  And if/when The Leonardo leaves, we’ll likely be putting more into it to reverse what they’ve done.  Preservation is about adaptability, but it’s also about preserving what’s unique to a community through its architecture.  Unfortunately, you won’t get the full picture at The Leonardo when it opens.  It's also disingenuous to represent that preservation is part of the values of a project, at an organization, and at the city, and then allow those values to be scrapped.

At this point, when it’s so close to completion and its come this far, the Council would be foolish to turn them down for a loan.  But if the Mayor and Council don’t get serious about protecting these significant structures by local designation or preservation easements on the interior and exterior, we’ll be using a lot more taxpayer and donated funds to save buildings that won’t include the features that actually make them unique.