Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Morot.
Hi Rachel, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The Historic Murray First Foundation was formed in 2018 by three citizens who wanted to save the historic Murray First Ward church building and neighboring Carnegie Library from demolition. Both buildings had been operating as a private school for decades and sadly, the family who owned the properties and ran the school had allowed the buildings to deteriorate due to neglect. By 2017, they wanted to move their school to a different and better-maintained location and sell off the church and library. At the point of listing for sale, the buildings were in such a state of disrepair that they were barely worth more than the land they were sitting on. With a tremendously brisk real estate market and housing crunch in Utah, we knew that it would be no time before a developer would snap up the property, demolish the historic structures and replace them with generic-looking high-rise, high-density apartments. Sadly, Murray had a mayor, city administration and city council at that time who were either openly hostile to or apathetic about historic preservation and the value of these beautiful buildings, we lost our fight, and the church and library were demolished in March of 2020. Even more regrettably, the expected but not welcome, seven-story high-rise mixed-use retail/apartment behemoth we dreaded is currently being constructed where the church and library stood and served the community of Murray for a little more than 100 years. The Historic Murray First Foundation was formed to try to save these irreplaceable buildings, but after our first devastating loss, we determined to persevere and work to advocate for all the historic buildings we have left in Murray. There aren’t many, but each one becomes more rarer and more valuable as new and cheaply constructed, outsized developments, spring up and overshadow our historic neighborhoods. So, we continue to work as hard as we can to bring awareness of the vital importance historic preservation is to our community, not just to save the buildings that have graced Murray City for generations and could be revitalized and repurposed, but also to preserve the quality of life in our city that diminishes every time a new high rise development gets approved. City governments only see value in monetary terms, but the people of Murray have expressed they value the quality of life and a human-scale built environment, so we in the Historic Murray First Foundation continue to give voice to the wishes of our friends and neighbors in our advocacy, education and outreach programs.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely, our path has been steep, uphill, and rocky. The historic preservation game is not for the faint of heart or the easily discouraged as we learned with our first major loss of the Murray First Ward and Carnegie Library. There were so many times we would brainstorm solutions at board meetings go out and try to get buy in from the city or other stakeholders and be met with roadblock after roadblock. It felt like we were constantly chasing our own tails. There was not enough time, there was literally no money and it seemed like there was no one interested in being actively helpful. We spent thousands of dollars of our own money to begin operations until we were able to stage our first limited fundraising campaign. The bright spots were beautiful, generous people who donated to us either in pro bono work to get our legal paperwork filed and our graphic design package or in checks of $5-$100 or whatever they could afford to give. I still feel deep gratitude for these early donations because they were such a vote of support and confidence in our mission that far exceeded in value the actual dollar amount given.
Before our foundation formed, an individual Murray preservationist had sued Murray City over its failure to follow its own historic code protections as relating to the church and library. The city was greenlighting redevelopment of those properties to a proposed senior living facility that completely circumvented the preservation codes they had on the books protecting those historically designated structures. The individual preservationist took Murray City to court, and against all expectations, won the case. This set the mayor, at the time, and his community and economic development director completely against anything to do with historic preservation. He was openly hostile to all preservation efforts that came after the lawsuit, which meant we started at a significant disadvantage. After losing the lawsuit, the response from the city administration was to totally wipe out the historic protections that were on the books safeguarding over 70 historic buildings in the city. The new legislation was approved 5 to 0 by the city council at the time. This change meant that any owner of any property designated as historically significant could simply write a letter to the city asking that their building be removed from the protected structures list, and it would be done. This meant that there was nothing in place to keep them from immediately selling off the building(s) which likely resulted in demolition. The owner of the historic Murray First Ward and Carnegie Library took instant advantage of this and removed his properties from the list. Sold them a few months later to a development company and they were demolished a few months after that. I would say that the time crunch was our biggest obstacle. We were trying so hard to raise money to buy the buildings ourselves, but as a startup foundation, it’s nearly impossible to get significant grants. Starting a 501c3 while trying to operate as a fundraising entity with 3 board members and no staff is an impossible task, but we tried anyway and I’m proud of us for not giving up.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
We specialize in raising awareness of the citizens in our community and advocating with our city government. Basically, an education/advocacy approach. It crosses over too. We had to do a lot of educating to our city leadership on the importance and value our remaining historic buildings add to our city. It’s an uphill effort a lot of times, because while the citizens seem to be generally positive and supportive of maintaining the historic character of Murray City from their growing up years (we have a large older demographic in our city) our city leaders can often see only the benefit of new development based on immediate return of revenue. For example, our current project is trying to save a 1930’s WPA building, the Arlington elementary school, which has been repurposed and serving as our city hall. The city has built new offices and will be moving in April of 2023 which leaves this building very much at risk as it is up for sale and on a prime piece of State Street property that many developers want to buy, and our city is eager to sell for top dollar. They are pushing for up to 10 stories of high-density mixed-use apartment/retail space which will be very detrimental to our city. Not only would we be losing another historic structure that should be adaptively reused into something serving the community, but what they want to replace it with will be unattractive, a strain on our infrastructure, out of scale and will be right on the border of Murray Park which is the heart of our city and as of this year, eligible for historic designation. We will be appealing to Murray citizens to stand up for this building, reach out to their council members and advocate for the preservation and reuse of the Arlington School. We are also continually working with newly elected members of the council to show them the benefits of slower, mindful, more harmonious revitalization rather than the teardown/build newer and bigger model that is taking over everywhere else.
We have had many losses and disappointments but even those have grown into great relationships with our current city leadership, members of our community and other preservationists in Utah. Some of the recent wins that we celebrate are our advocacy effort to stop a modern style, high-density mixed-use development from replacing our downtown historic buildings. The city government at that time went ahead with an agreement with a developer to do this project without ever having surveyed the citizens about what they wanted. We mobilized and quickly got the word out to the public that the plans for the new development were being presented at an open house and that everyone should attend and make their voices heard in opposition to the project and in favor of a historic look and feel downtown. The outcome of this was that the project stalled and lapsed and the new city administration that took over considered the overwhelming support the citizens showed for a historic city center and contracted with an analytics firm to conduct an official survey of what Murray Citizens want in their revitalization of downtown. The results that came back showed that over 60% favored a human scale, historic style city center with a hometown feel. Murray has always been its own independent municipality in the center of the Salt Lake City metropolis, with its own city services and utilities and school district. There has been a strong sense of identity and uniqueness within the city that our organization identifies with and works to keep alive. We reject the homogeneity of the modern style of architectural development that is taking over all around us and we give voice to our neighbors here that demand something different and better for their town. We’re very proud of the history we still have. We’re proud of our citizens for caring about their community and stepping up to voice that support.
I don’t know that tenacity sets us apart from any other preservation effort out there, but we certainly cultivate that as a core value. Historic preservation is often a game with more wins than losses and you can’t be a committed preservationist without having a determination to never give up as long as there is a historic building or place that needs a champion. We recognize and feel deeply that the more of our historic places we lose to modernization, the more of our community identity goes along with it and that’s often not a positive or healthy outcome.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
If you have a love for the history of the place you live or care about the quality of your surroundings, please get involved in your civic process. It is an invaluable learning experience you’ll grow from personally as well as contributing something of value to your community. It’s a wonderful way to make a difference, meet other people who care and persuade those who don’t yet. This can look like starting to attend city council meetings and getting familiar with the way your local government works so that you can effectively advocate for what you care about. Take a positive and collaborative approach with you. Persuasion and humor work SO much better than making demands. We learned this lesson through some difficult trial and error. Find common ground. There are city council members who will never see the value in historic preservation, and we understand that they care about getting the most revenue possible out of the decisions they make. That is the way they see adding value to their community and we can appreciate them for it while agreeing to disagree that value goes way beyond dollars and is really in the fabric of a place. The style, scale and condition of buildings and streets and neighborhood districts and parks; the aesthetics and harmony of the place we live add to or detract so much unconsidered value to our quality of life and impacts for good or ill the collective psychology and emotional welfare of a community. We fear those things are not being considered at all. If you care, care actively, connect and get to work to keep your hometown a place you want to stay.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://historicmurrayfirst.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historicmurrayfirst/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Historicmurrayfirst
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@historicmurrayfirstfoundat3489
Image Credits
Murray City Museum
Rachel Morot
Amy Thomas
