Bala Avenue Corridor on Conservancy’s New Watch List

A federal push for energy conservation, and an accompanying tax break amid a recession, have been prompting more Americans to replace old, drafty windows in the last couple years.

However, in this way, energy conservation can threaten historical preservation, said Lori Salganicoff of the Lower Merion Conservancy, which this month headlined its 13th annual Preservation Watchlist with the window-replacement issue.

"That's actually a national issue that is affecting us in Lower Merion," said the conservancy's director of historic preservation. She has seen plenty of township property owners replace old buildings' windows, "some of which were beyond repair but many of which might have been repaired."

The list also includes three Bala Cynwyd-specific issues, chiefly the fate of the Bala Avenue commercial corridor that built up in the 1920s and which could see more foot traffic with the advent of the Cynwyd Heritage Trail.

"Some of (the buildings) have had some alterations, many of which are reversible," Salganicoff said. "There's opportunity there for it to really come back as a great main street, but there are no preservation protections and there are development pressures."

The purpose of the watchlist is to attract public attention—and in some successful cases, benefactors—to endangered historical elements in the township. An advisory committee of architects, historians and civic leaders takes nominations from the public each fall, then culls the list down to about a dozen properties or general issues based on:

1. the relative historical importance of the properties;
2. the immediacy of the threats to them;
3. special considerations, such as that a property would be a suitable symbol of a larger issue that needs more attention.

"With the short list, I reach out to all of the owners to find out as much as I can," Salganicoff said. "Do we have the correct information? Is there anything going on behind the scenes with the property that we don't know about?"

Perhaps understandably, property owners often do not respond.

"And that's fine," Salganicoff said. "We want for this list to really be a help, rather than a bludgeoning tool. We have found people have been able to connect with resources. There are only so many regulatory tools."

As a Lower Merion observer would reasonably expect, the list also makes mention of the street-sign controversy, in which the federal government has pushed Lower Merion to replace its historic signs with larger signs that are easier to read.

Salganicoff said those might be suitable for busier roads, but not in neighborhoods: "Where there are slower streets, we believe we should be able to retain our street signs."