The importance of preserving historic homes and under what requirements and regulations is an ongoing discussion that may not have a resolution anytime soon.

When residents of one of Albuquerque’s oldest neighborhoods watched in horror as a 98-year-old house was demolished, several of them decided to prevent such action from happening again. The Spruce Park neighborhood, populated by many homes built in the 1920s, is seeking a special designation to preserve old properties, according to KRQE.

“History is something that always you can’t replicate or redo something once you’ve torn it down,” Fredi Ziter, a Spruce Park Street representative, said to KRQE. “It’s important to me that we preserve that, or at least we are communicating.”

Spruce Park Street is part of a neighborhood known as Pill Hill because of its proximity to a number of medical offices. Many of the houses were built almost a century ago and are among the most expensive in the city. 

Residents and concerned citizens are petitioning the city to designate the area as a historic overlay district, according to KRQE. This designation of historic preservation would enact dozens of city rules concerning what property owners can and can not do to their homes, including but not limited to changes to windows, doors, porches, and front entrances.

“We make reviews of exterior changes to a property to make sure those changes are historically appropriate both to the structure of the house that’s on the site as well as to the neighborhood as a whole,” Leslie Naji, city of Albuquerque historic preservation planner, said to KRQE.

A community meeting was planned for late March at the Saint Thomas Canterbury Church to discuss the issues. If the organization gets enough signatures, the petition would have to be approved by both the Landmarks Commission and City Council. There are six other historic overlay zones in the city currently, according to KRQE.