Landmarks: Unanimous support for National Register Nomination of Abravanel Hall

But the fight is not over yet.

Last night, the Salt Lake City Landmarks Commission unanimously approved a recommendation to nominate Abravanel Hall for the National Register of Historic Places. Many people testified to the merits and emotional connection they had to the building, including several of the Utah Symphony musicians.

That’s all very, very appropriate and downright tear-jerking. But it is just the first step in the road to the actual register. And even if it is on the register, that does not prevent demolition or even slow it down. By the time it is complete, Mayor Jenny Wilson will have finally come clean with a decision she made months ago.

“Down it comes!” — Mayor Jenny Wilson, right after the election.

Here are my comments to Salt Lake City Landmarks Commission last night:

It is rare in public life, to have the chance do what is honorable in the face of certain failure.  I am asking that the Landmarks Commission unanimously support the National Register Nomination 

As outrageous as it may seem to all of us, Mayor Jenny Wilson and Ryan Smith WILL tear down Abravanel Hall. The decision has already been made – and whatever has been said or stated or promised by either one of them publicly is simply a diversion.  The internal communications clearly demonstrate that The bulldozers have practically been paid for and lined up. 

We will fight on. We will all be standing there in front of those bulldozers — the Landmarks Commission and the Planning Commission, and the American Institute of Architects, and Preservation Utah, and the historians, and the symphony musicians, and the music lovers, the donors and a few thousand other civic citizens. We will be lined up to protest but we will just be arrested, and the demolition will go on. I’ve never been arrested, but I’m pledging right now to put it on my bucket list! 

Perhaps saddest of all is that the legacy of Jenny Wilson will not be any of the good things she has ever done for the county or anything else in her life, but it will be THIS: she willfully and senselessly destroyed a Salt Lake treasure. 

And when that story is told, the fact that Abravanel Hall WAS a National Register Historic Building will go down as the true honoring of the public trust. And you will be known as people who unanimously recognized their chance to do the right thing in a public forum, however, hopeless it may be.