Thursday January 18, 2007 at 7:30 PM at the St. Pauls Lutheran Church at Wynnewood and Athens. The precise address is 415 East Athens Avenue, Ardmore, PA 19003.

As mentioned in a previous post by one of our wonderful other bloggers, this is a joint venture ArdWood Civic, North Ardmore Civic, & SAC are coming together for indeed a greater good: to present a roundtable discussion on neighborhood preservation.

The title of our roundtable discussion on neighborhood preservation is "Balancing Development with Preservation: Maintaining the Character of Our Neighborhoods in the 21st Century".

These are conversations we must have in our communities because as we live in the present and work to plan our futures, communities need to have concrete plans regarding preserving our pasts. And face it, each town, each neighborhood, each municipality is steeped in wonderful pasts. The history of our area is so fascinating from the settlement of our area centuries ago, and how we grew.

And while we appreciate our history, we are sometimes left feeling betwixt and between trying to achieve balance with what we seek to preserve and what government and developers mandate as essential smart growth for lack of a better description.

This roundtable presents a unique opportunity for all to come together: citizens, government, developers. Perhaps if we all were able to find a common ground life might be a little less contentious at times. Perhaps we will never achieve that utopia, but we should all try.

We are fortunate to have an incredible panel of speakers (list incomplete as of this post):

• Adrian Scott Fine. Adrian is the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Northeast Regional Director

• Nancy Lotz Narberth Borough Council Vice President

• State Representative Daylin Leach

The roundtable is free and open to the public from all communities. We encourage everyone to attend. And that includes goverment officials. After all, to practice good government, isn't it essential to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk???? And we are fortunate to have at our community disposal, such an informed panel of speakers!

Folks, together, we have a chance at a balanced and bright future! E-mail and with questions. Media is also welcomed and encouraged to attend this event.

We will leave you with the following article from a couple years back, as it is germane to our conversation here - it might be about Chicago, but what they discuss is happening nationwide:

Chicago Tribune: The threat to neighborhoods

Research and destroy: Developers and city officials have sent to the scrap heap the very treasures they vowed to preserve
By Blair Kamin and Patrick T. Reardon

Erosion of character

The demolitions are eliminating affordable housing at a time when it is in short supply in Chicago and are eroding the character of the city's once-distinct communities -- Bucktown, with its workers' cottages; Bronzeville, with its mansions; Wrigleyville, with its graystones; the Near West Side, with its rowhouses.

This housing stock, together with its commercial complement, gave Chicago its cherished reputation as a city of neighborhoods.

But now, that distinctiveness is being devastated by an unlikely combination of tear-down trends that are wreaking havoc nationwide -- one that is replacing small homes with massive new ones in wealthy suburbs such as Hinsdale and affluent neighborhoods such as Lake View, the other that is erasing dilapidated houses in places such as Detroit and Chicago's West Side, turning entire blocks into vast prairies.

"They're two different dynamics, but they're equally devastating to a neighborhood," said Adrian Scott Fine, a senior program officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who recently completed a study of tear-downs in more than 100 communities nationwide.

"It's the homogenization of urban America," added Royce Yeater, the director of the Trust's Chicago-based Midwest office. "All cities look alike."

Also, you might want to check out Taming the Teardown Trend from the National Trust for Historic Preservation