State board approves historic designation for Century II, former downtown library

The Century II center in Wichita got another layer of protection over the weekend when a state board voted it onto the Register of Historic Kansas Places.

The state will now forward the building’s nomination to the National Park Service for possible inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review in a Saturday teleconference meeting also voted to grant historical status to the former Central Library building that shares the parking lot with Century II, the city’s convention and performing arts center since 1969.

Both buildings are proposed for demolition because they are within the site where the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition is proposing a $1 billion-plus redevelopment project.

The historical designation wouldn’t stop the city from tearing down the two buildings, but it would send the issue to the Wichita Historic Preservation Board.

“That board’s charge would be to determine whether tearing it down would damage or destroy the listed resource, well, by definition it does,” said Patrick Zollner, deputy director of the Kansas Historical Society.

“That means that the action cannot proceed until the local governing authority — which in this case happens to be the owner as well — has determined that there’s no feasible and prudent alternative to the planned project and that all planning has been done to minimize harm.”

“If they just were to run a motion and say, ‘Yes, there’s no feasible alternative, someone could challenge them on that and that and say ‘Where are your studies?’ or ‘How much would it cost to fix it up?’”

Any decision by the Wichita Historic Preservation Board could be overturned by the City Council.

The decision was immediately celebrated by proponents of the two historic buildings.

“It’s awesome,” said Celeste Racette, founder of the Save Century II group that gathered more than 17,000 signatures to put the building’s future on a ballot.

But she remains cautiously optimistic, especially after the city sued her last week challenging the validity of her petition as overly broad and saying the decision on whether to demolish the building shouldn’t be put to voters, she said.

“It doesn’t mean you can’t tear it down, it just isn’t going to be quite so easy as a vote of four people,” she said. ““We’re going to fight the city on this lawsuit that tries to cut citizens out of the decision process,” she said.

Recognition of the building as historic could also help the city get more money to renovate the building.

Historic designations are usually used to tap into state tax credits that pay 25% of the cost of restoring historical buildings, Zollner said.

“Tax credits have fueled lots of downtown Wichita’s revitalization over the years and they (the city) would be eligible for that too,” he said.

Although the city doesn’t pay taxes, it could still sell any historic tax credits it gets to a business that does have tax liabilities. The credits generally sell for about 90% of face value, Zollner said.

The state historic designation also allows the city to get money from the Heritage Trust Fund, a state program that provides up to $90,000 in preservation grants.

In that program, the state picks up 80 percent of the cost of the grant and the building owner must provide a 20 percent match, Zollner said.

‘Who owns the city?’

A coalition of downtown and business booster groups has been working to block historic registration of the two buildings, arguing that it could be a roadblock to the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan.

Alejo Cabral, director of W — a community of young professionals — attended the Saturday meeting and lobbied against listing Century II and the library building as historic sites on behalf of the coalition.

He said the group doesn’t have a position on whether the buildings are actually historic, but he doesn’t want the master plan to be “pigeon-holed” by the designation.

He said the coalition will meet again in the next few days to figure out what to do next but as of now it does support tearing down Century II and the former library at a later date.

“We wanted to make sure that the community had an opportunity to really understand what it meant for it to be registered historic, and we really wanted to be able to have this dialogue at a later date without the looming impact of our economy being affected heavily by COVID-19,” he said.

“By listing it as historic, it created a lot of restrictions, not just for the growth of our city but also direct impact on the tenants that operate out of Century II, like Music Theatre Wichita, Wichita Symphony and even Visit Wichita that uses it for different conventions and Wichita Festivals, they use it for their celebrations.”

Cabral said he wasn’t sure exactly what restrictions it would place on those groups.

“You limit the changes that can be done to the building. I’m not an expert. At the end of the day, I’m not a historian. From our end, we were just really there to represent the voice of young people,” he said.

He said the designation of Century II would “time stamp” the building. “So if for some reason in the future we found the dollars to renovate and update the building, the update wouldn’t necessarily be a full update. It would be a renovation of the way it is now.”

City Manager Robert Layton has also requested delaying the review process indefinitely to allow the Legacy plan to finish its work, which has paused during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a letter to the Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review, the coalition suggested Layton’s approval was needed to register the city-owned buildings.

“As the Kansas Historic Board of Review notes, ‘obtaining the written consent of the property owner to proceed with the nomination is strongly recommended,’” reads a letter signed by “Private Sector Partners of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan.”

“In this instance, a letter (attached) from City Manager Robert Layton dated July 10, 2020, requested that the local board also delay its consideration of the nomination of Century II until the community engagement process could be completed.”

Privately-owned buildings cannot be listed on the register without the consent of the building’s owner. But that’s not the case with public buildings, said Professor Jay Price, chair of the history department at Wichita State University and a board member on the Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review.

Price said the fight over Century II and the former library serves as “a window into Wichita.”

“It’s actually a window into a much larger conversation,” he said. “Just as much as it’s a question about who owns the building it’s a question ‘Who owns Wichita?’”

Price said the board’s decision was based on the significance of the buildings, not outside political factors.

“Our charter is actually quite narrow,” Price said. “We’re not there to determine the best way to utilize it, we’re not going to say whether it’s appropriate to renovate it in certain ways or not or whether it’s cost effective.

“The only determination we can make is whether a building is historically significant or not and maintains the original integrity to express that historic significance.”

The nominations for Century II and the former library building, both owned by the city of Wichita and constructed in the 1960s with money raised by a sales tax approved by Wichita voters, were drafted by a group of private citizens.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the National Registry is, and it does not automatically require a building to become a museum. It calls attention to the significance of a building and there are parameters in place to help support and protect the buildings.

“But being on the register does not automatically prevent the building from being torn down,” Price said. “What it is does is it adds an additional layer of comment on buildings and puts the city’s historic preservation board’s voice into the stewardship of the building.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 5:01 AM.