hi and welcome to commissioners connor i am vice mayor jenae her and cotch and i am pleased to be joined today with larry keller her who is a digital specialist at the historic resources of sarasota county  historic resources and historic preservation is something that is a hot topic in our city right now i don't know if you know larry but our historic preservation board is really looking at and examining all of their standards and they're creating incentives for historic preservation in the city of sarasota and it's something that the community is talking about and something that the community is very interested in and as we grow i think it's a very important piece of our community that we pay attention to and that we make sure that the community is aware of what we have here as far as resources go and how we can preserve them what that entails and it's not just about the city of sarasota because we look at some issues as regional and larger issues and the sarasota county has taken many steps towards this and what you do there is really laudable i was on the website last night and i looked at the collection that you have online and i got lost i have to say i spent about i don't know it's a half an hour forty five minutes lost in the collection and dreaming about it so you've done a wonderful job online and i would encourage anybody to to go ahead and go to the website but before we get started into specific items can you just introduce yourself give us a little bit of your background and maybe some more details about what the historic resources of sarasota county really are ok i'm sure again larry carroll her  dayton but anyway the i got interested in i was growing up here in architecture i liked it but i didn't know anything about it and i'm fortunately i was i was born in forty nine so in the fift when i was raised here so i would say it was a wonderful time but unfortunately we took it all for granted we didn't ever think it would change and of course of half i want to wait a college all that i lived in houston for a number of demolished and i was shocked and so anyway that it kind of segues into you know me working and i've mentioned the volunteer to historical resources became a part time  contract employee and then finally when the budget was better i would became a full time employee and so i really enjoyed was especially digitizing things because you get to see all the old photographs and the people that come in there are amazing because they'll come in this is not an object or something so i'm i'm the first person to see them and it and you get to talk listen to their stories and it's amazing to me these are people that are like my grandparents age and they are from there so in doing all that it's a well rounded way to understand sarasota this history and i wish and i'm glad that people are taking more of an interest in preservation now and the city is willing to also look at it from that standpoint as well it's just a shame that we are tucked away out east and we used to be downtown at the old historic chizik building ok but then after katrina they had a fear of you know the tidal surges and the hurricanes and stuff like that so we moved out there and it's an archive so it's it's generally for research and we have an archaeology department we have preservation and we have a historian type work and then we have we have a new collections curator which is like a manager and she and i work very closely now making sure we can find everything that we're looking for the website is rather limited if we change the website and a lot of the information and pictures and stuff have been removed because we have to update all this because it's not compatible with what they are you know technology so it'll be improving so your time spent would be much longer but i've been that we i belong to the i'm on the board of the alliance for store preservation and that's hall so one of my interests because one of the first things i noticed when i came back in studio a lot of the buildings are not really but over and luke would park there was this mountain with stairs going up too and i used to play on that thing as a kid we thought it would play king of the hill so then think much of it when i was a historical resources i found some old postcards of what it really was it was the mabel ringling memorial fountain so i plead with restoration because we didn't have all the pieces so we did a renovation and we had the fountains i mean the statuary cast in tallahassee because it's ringling stuff we had to send it there so that was a it's steps and you know preservation is not easy right but it's worth it right and that's my whole object so that what we do out there is we not just do preservation but we also have archaeology and you know there could have been some older one theories about the purpose of this where it represents deities important leaders are honored ancestors of native peoples and this one this somewhere between  thirteen hundred years old wow so we have tons of stuff found at the store for resources involving archaeology well i know you've got some samples of preservation and let's start with buildings not only preservation but also reusing a building inside and repurpose so you know we do have a number of buildings in our city where people you know often think oh it's just cheaper to tear it down but it's much more sustainable right if you can actually repurpose a building that's already there yeah can you just talk a little bit about some of the the stuff that you brought here ok and what that means to  well the greenest building is the one that's already here not the one you're going to build if you're tearing something down because that's all going to go to a landfill and completely wipes out all the games now you can take an older building and repurpose it and  clued more updating of green technology depp's course what i would like to see but one of the buildings of threat now is that she was building grain and i brought this picture we have of the architectural plans purposed dale parks had this the architect right out of this glass but the part that was he's spite of these whatever you want to call them t know they suggest the look of sailboats on the bay and that was because they built it right by the water so that was that purpose that so so much to understand that the gee whiz is still a building that could be  a ability for children to play indoors and outdoors and now he's so what i hear you saying is that the building could still be best it can for the next generation it's been looked at by a number of architects and yes it would cost some money like anything else but it could be repurposed and you know are interested be to make it into a county museum because our chins the building is there and it still has some exhibits and stuff but we're trying to go back to the people are because we're so far are these nobody i mean people know where they are who need us but they don't they want to go see something they want to see exhibits and they want to see objects that we have  for example the history center in tampa the big new one that's relatively that was millions upon millions of dollars to build that so we went up there and looked at it went behind the scenes and stuff and you realize we have more items than they do but we have a long storage so you don't get to see them i get to see them but that's not that's not right up it's so close to it should be seeing these things to tell our history and and you know it helps with the heritage tourism it gives you a sense of place i i have a website called sarasota history alive and i get all kinds of inquiries from realtors and people coming here to want to know more about where they're buying  house is there a history not about the house necessarily but about area so i'm able to tell them their is their story and i wish we could do more of that and be more accessible to the public to be able to week with somebody and they were talking about how that they were meeting with somebody and then the person you know was sitting at the ritz and this is not anything reds but they were at the ritz happened to be there and the person was complaining about how come sarah citizen preserve their history and why is there nothing that we can do here in this city that involves you know historical preservation where can i go to see your history and how you started anyway just ironic that you would be sitting there when one of our most amazing buildings was also demolished that was on that spot you know so i mean it they were fund raising beijing a number of people trying to save it and the time the clock ran out and it is what it is it's gone so it was a very sad time to see it go they were well on their way to having enough money to do it but it didn't happen so if we can learn from these examples and not to let that happen again an example would be like sarasota high school thank goodness that ringling college of art and design has taken in with that little thing on top right that's offending ok but on the high school there were they were these up on the top right of on the tower and around the corners of all of the bill like twenty four of them actually and but when they take it up see this building is considered collegiate conflict ok well you've got the collegiate left but you don't have a got to having more so with it needs to go back to its original state i went and got the plans of the building because we don't have the to make a cast of them here's the original one thousand and twenty six plants we have all three in the interior of the building now and marie russell is the person in charge the executive director i guess for a title of redoing the building ok and i've been working with her and i'm scanning old air yearbooks because they want to have a key house there for the public to look up their year they graduated and then they can enter their recollections and memories and sub so i'm working on that it's a lot of work to scan all those things right but this was one of those from one nine hundred thirty seven this is the annual at the time of sarasota high and then the for usa they had six statues that were gifts from her members like we used to give gifts to the classroom with a knife and now we find that if i only kept finding the three i wasn't finding the other three and i was correct for some going through all the old yearbooks i should say that any of the entities around this in the city and the county it has to store a co items that they are tossing are not don't want to do it right call us up we  value way if it's going to be an significant enough for the county's history and the city but then we accept it we don't where limit to the room and that's what we're trying to go back into the chadsey and would love to get into another because w so much stuff that we need to show you and have conserved and be stored and there's all this stuff coming in almost every day and we just don't have room and it's cool stuff so let me ask  with the county leases it from the city the county sublease it to our friends group and they were tasked with managing the building and doing it that's too much for a nonprofit to do so what we're proposing is have me go down there and run the building and then we would have one of our other staff members come in they would trade off one day here on this because you can't have me alone in the building and we could have volunteers but they're not they're not employees of the county won't hear of that so we're turning to those and getting back to exhibits those exhibits up there have been there for ten years and it's ridiculous you can't leave things on display that long they start to have problems and we would like to got but we're waiting on budgets and you know like anything else you're waiting to hear whether the commission will agree to it if they do agree to it then we more accessible to the residents  but yeah i would love to see the repurposed saying and doing more and then again we've talked about doing rotating the exhibits every three months instead of leaving them out so what kind of items would people be able to see when they were there i know when i toured the facility with you you know i was just in awe of all of the items that you had there but i love history i love sarasota and that connection is heartwarming for me now but you know can you just explain some of the items that maybe people would be able to see that we could refurbish and how that ties back into sarasota in our history and let's get to the van ways of overstaying on that area of town ok you brought some kind of this but it looks quite similar to the way it looks to course this is been added up there's been some kind of porch thing done here but this is the actual i mean i think when you know when you're on the ground and you look at the van ways and everybody said it was designed like a shell it's really hard to see when you're there looking at it but when you look at this it's very obvious that that is a scallop shell you know from this angle you know so now i see it i mean i always loved the building and the the architecture and the way  challenges you but now i am shelly can see the salad she has that when you're close up you don't see it but when you are like on the bridge or whatever and you're looking at how i get it you know one of the other buildings that you had mentioned that is thread now this also can be re arts and so that's great i just think this has so many possibilities and you've got a building it's function it's been working all these years it's why tear it down by and like you said before you know the building to it and i think of the as a wonderful area and from a native point of view and i grew up there was all that land was not there it was stretched and you could never do this again with fema but it to coconut where the whole house was and down attorneys are yes there's another one down here in orange you obscured behind trees you know you can find places but this one had the owner it was j b turner turner and it was that place was built in one nine hundred twelve and he purchased it he came here and eight hundred ninety nine he became involved in local government and it was most remembered for is as one of the service prominent merchants so back in the day he went into business with high smith and prime class with turner and prime and this was on main street and these are some of the people here on the front of it so he was a mercantile guy and did a lot from the town so his house to me is important the alliance for historic preservation me we have a revolving fund where if there's a mitigation with the developer and they want to pay a certain amount to have it moved then we as a nonprofit we manage that process and the money and so we turn and we've done that before we've moved the help move the  v wilson house ok that was a rusticated block they rican prayed and all the block is in earth for park now right now it's best to preserve a building or a home on the property where it is paying development sometimes is to take it away right so instead of losing it we move it to what we think is an acceptable location so the public can still see it it's just and not the correct but it could it could be repurposed it's in fine enough shape to do any purpose came here for bertha palmer it was thomas or even martin and he was quite a guy he built five hundred buildings in sarasota during the boom time ok yeah so one of the things he did  of the ones this was the roths cigar factory ok and it's still there but it looks like this today so he took that building and then redid it so it's a cigar factory here and it became court and it is just off of main street next to the miramar apartments granted it's right behind the demarc a hotel which is also threatened so those two buildings in my opinion could be repurposed but using it as a doorstop ok and he said it's from the raw cigar factory as i'm sure and he said it's the plate you use to make the cigar buy so the lettering is backwards so if you think that this is just one of the brands they had many don't send me old age papers i don't have them all but what is one of the things that thomas reed martin did which i thought was another amazing thing this wooden house was a south palm ave ok he moves it to north palm happened ok and it became this so here is a better picture this is the day cars and a house this is the reagan house they're both historically designated but he took this one this wouldn't insult prox house covered it with stucco and on the same board maps which are insurance fire insurance maps you look at it and it says it's made out of stone it does but it's not it's made out of wood so all that sure is they didn't have to pay the extra fees for the insurance he didn't do that intentionally as if they did they just assume it's right ok ok another thing well they're using the queen a few they're going to save it and they're repurposing it they haven't decided yet how to repurpose it but i'm glad they're going to save it now we actually went to the groundbreaking and we met the gentleman that is doing the restoration work on that building and we all got a tour of the inside and it was absolutely beautiful i mean it's not beautiful as it is now but i mean the potential of it is there and just one of those buildings that can generate a lot of conversation and also the ability to repurpose it and to enhance that sense of pride for our community in our history that we have here and that we do take the extra steps when we can to preserve hooked up with they hooked up together they use office it later became coral because home unfortunately those two buildings were demolished and nine hundred ninety eight but the whole complex included those two the broadway and done by dwight bomb james james ball and no one burns contracted them to do all this which is great stuff yes and i really hope the other two buildings will stay because they're on prime land you know but there are people still want to see that sure sure i mean when you go to when you go to vacation or you go to any town and one of the things that's most people do is they go to the house to work downtown they want to see you know i'm visiting this town but what's the essence of it where does it come from having and what are they preserved to share with me so that i can now go on and understand the way this town developed a way the way this community came from every town had its own industry or own culture and arts and so on and so forth we have so much of that here right and i'm really happy to see that our city is making efforts now and increasingly sefer it's to start to preserve some of our historic structures and historic items displaying them would be real value i think to the community and to you know the be nice if we could somehow collaborate with the city and whatever i'm not sure i want to get into politics but it would be so nice if we could finally arrive at a building that would be able to house all this and we could still do research there and we could still do preservation of items we still have archaeology was still if we just need more room we don't have room and when you came out you saw most things were covered up because hurricane season is coming you know so we have to cover everything and target and secure it and it is a shame because it's a storage unit that i really write and you should what we have in the stories behind them because there's a lot there so i hope one day we can do that and i can people go out and visit the facility now it's well into the public now is how they are into the public but if you make arrangements with me and that we're talking it now about maybe one day a month having like an open house and we can uncover some of the stuff and show to people we haven't finalized that yet with my manager he's a little leery but i'm all for it you know we can show people what we have and get them interested and maybe there would be more demand for a actual history museum or would be a good gauge right you could see the interest and where people go with it and also items that are of more interest and less and less interest to other people yeah and that would be a good starting point for an eventual exhibit somewhere yeah you know we've talked about doing small exhibits in the libraries and stuff but they're hard to put together and move around  really need to leave them for a little while and transportation of historical artifacts is difficult you've got to be really careful and it's it's a thought you know we're still going with how can we do is education and saying how are we going to educate people we don't have the staff were used to we don't have people going out like jeff lurd used to do we don't have them anymore so we have to just work with what we've got and hopefully get enough interest in we're doing a lot instagram now for example i think a lot of followers we started with none now we have like three hundred and it's and we only did it start of the about a month ago so people like it it's just then how do we take the next out again with money is the one way but that's and so it's not in the offing at the moment one day it might work out and i think we would be able to fulfill what you're talking about right so if if somebody has a historic structure of their own they own it and oftentimes the impression is that if you have a designated either nationally or locally or some other way that it's going to be an impediment that you'll never be able to do anything with it can you just talk a little bit about the advantages and what that means between a national designation and a local designation with the differences there's not a whole lot of difference the applications and stuff are similar ok the local des nations are a little bit more strict so that's a good thing strict for more things to fulfill and the application and like for example i brought a printout here  restructures need to be at least fifty years old and they must possess historical integrity and the ability to relay their historical significance through their physical appearance at the display resources must be associated with significant or historical events or figures or associated with defined historical context embodied to the center of character excess characteristics of an architectural style or method of construction or be able to use them from reporting information or pre history so let me ask if somebody does decide to designate their house for example i think the impression is that people think they can never run a vader they can never fix it up that their hands are tied is that the case  so you go before preservation boards if you're wanting to do so let's say you want to change windows and then these really older homes the windows are kind of not the best you know and they can't be necessarily be repaired now those windows that are made by today's standards even though hurricane raises to it look similar enough and we at the preservation boards tried to encourage the owner especially on the outside of the building to maintain its log in in the interior you can do what you want now if you sell a building again you get tax advantages that along tax the bad as all this stuff and that's the reason to do it besides preserving a house or district there's historic districts as well but and i wonder when they buy it they can do whatever they want it's their own property and that says i wish we had a stricter way of making taining of ours they wouldn't buy the historic homes because they want to researchers and genealogist and people designating something right because you have to do the research and the only way you can to do that is use a city polk city directories and there's the city i think gets them too but we have a complete set out and we get engineers in genealogist authors just all sorts of people in one hour they just want to know because these are cross references if because the the address is in sarasota all changed in one thousand fifty three ok gordon heigl was the postmaster he made the decision everything changes so when you go to do research with you got to have a conversion book to say this trait was called such and such back and you know one nine hundred ten today it's such and so frank so you have to figure it out but that's what i'm there for to help people but in the meanwhile the there's also we have a whole library it's all about  florida history ok so that's another thing i would love to move to the chair the so it's more convenient for people to come there because that was a library we would open up the stacks again i like the old library and we'd have somebody pull the books for you when i have talked about this idea with a handful of people are they i'll say that and that sounds wonderful to have you know a certain history museum but the first thing they say is why would we move these historical documents and historical items to a place that is so profound and maybe raise a building like this and then ways that you can do this because then it each year bring in a certain amount of list if you will let it settle and it would take a number of years to do it correctly i believe and it would be not cheap but she's going to say how much sense it it's what i know we can move buildings you know that's a few hundred thousand dollars i mean they've got to take down power lines and they did that with the historical society you know and you distort the middle of the night you know we did that with the it's easy to reinforce this building yeah you would have to do something about some of the glass and the but again he said it would cost a little bit but it's not you know it's not crazy amount of money some of the decisions are or some of the opinions being said are by people saying oh it can't be saved it's got mold or well so you know we had all that on our building we had to have it repaired right because we had this in hurricane irma came up through the walls the water created mold so we had to remove seven and clean everything and then you know you just deal with your living for you know it is what it is so it can be done i just hate to see throwing away something that was by noted architects of new york and i coast this is one of the families will to me can be repurposed and be enjoyed for many many years to even though or you can mitigate with other types of ways to block the water coming in so what i hear you saying is that some of these older buildings in art in our community in our town whether they're large buildings or their small homes there can be problems like there aren't any building but it's not an insurmountable often not an insurmountable issue that can't be solved if we want to preserve our history with some of these structures you know it will come at a cost but it doesn't sound like it's a cost that would be too much of a  we could do this rather than people wanting to move so quickly let's get rid of the buildings and redo the whole area wow it's for those of us from here would hate to see that set up a visit should they need to use your library if you could just give us that information that would be very hard we are open for research from ten till three mondays and wednesdays and tuesdays and thursdays we're open ten to five for research and friday we're closed to research we still work but we're doing our work we can't help but see that in the public you donate that same thing just come in or you it's better to call me first because i can make sure our collections curator is there ok because i prefer to have her take stuff in because she's going to have to a session it and then they have to interview you like who is in this picture where this item come from do you know anything about it because we have to take something just smith so there's a different thing is it just depends you know and they it helps being from here because a lot of questions come in that i can answer from my memory not necessarily from going into research right one of the things i get all the time and i wish somebody could help me on this people want to know how streets got their names how did this streak at its name and how did that i don't have that i don't know and so now i've been kind of researching like for example paper a park ok the pavers paint a lot of the streets after the kids you know and a lot of all of us do that in big developments but the other stuff you know the street is like ok so it's usually a prominent person that was a reason for it but then i could make i've got about sixty or seventy streets nailed down now oh well it was all difficult because i just happened upon the answers and i have other people looking for me to get an answer that i had to my because we shouldn't be the only ones knowing the stuff is there you should see it absolutely well thank you larry so much i really appreciate you taking the time to join me today and to talk with us i mean i'm not buyer i bring other deliveries out and show them to