What good is a vow with an asterisk?
"I take you for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part—but I am open to considering other options that may be more financially viable."
If someone said that during their wedding ceremony, they would be sending mixed messages at a time when clarity is of utmost importance. One might even conclude that the speaker did not actually want to get married, but instead had other intentions.
It is from this perspective that I wish to address the state of public discussion regarding the Renwick Courthouse and its surrounding properties. There have been many asterisks in places where they have no business when addressing the future of the building. In particular, the question of who will own the building when eventual redevelopment occurs has not had the kind of clarity of intent that it deserves.
Several times since the closing of the Renwick Courthouse, City Council has informally suggested that they intend to retain ownership of the building. This is well and good, as every public opinion poll on the matter shows that citizens of Fredericksburg and others in the region overwhelmingly agree that it should remain publicly owned. Similarly, the consulting firm Frazier Associates told us that, yes, continued public ownership is the correct course of action. As stated in their 2019 report, on page 22 we find:
Renwick Courthouse is arguably the most architecturally significant building in downtown Fredericksburg … Local governments are generally safe and stable stewards of significant municipal assets, and this particular site is too significant to Fredericksburg's history to risk a change in ownership that might endanger the buildings. We therefore recommend that the City retain ownership of these three buildings—or, in order of magnitude, that it retain ownership of the Renwick Courthouse, then the Wallace Library, then the jail.
However, in that same report, clarity of intent regarding ownership is confusingly absent. On page 44, when discussing the financial viability of the boutique hotel option, it reads:
We also made a few initial assumptions about revenues and operating expenses for the entity that owns the Renwick Compound (either the City or a nonprofit or for-profit entity to which it transfers ownership—see “Ownership Structure”, beginning on page x, for more discussion of this option).
Friends, I regret to inform you that the report does not contain a section titled "Ownership Structure" and there is no page "x".
While I wish this were a simple typo, a more detailed version of this ownership structure is actually explained later in the report's appendix. We find a complicated scheme of tax credit syndication where the city transfers ownership of the Renwick Courthouse to a private developer in order to take advantage of Historic Tax Credits, noting, “While it is possible for a municipality to directly undertake a rehabilitation tax credit project, ownership, financing and other complications make this option very difficult." Hardly a position to take if public ownership were the primary goal.
The mixed messaging continues, most recently at the City Council work session of January 10. While many present agreed that continued public ownership of Renwick was a good idea, they also agreed that the boutique hotel project was still a top contender for adaptive reuse of the building. To this, City Manager Timothy Baroody was quick to point out that no developer would invest the millions of dollars necessary to complete the project without some stake in ownership. If City Council is committed to continued public ownership of the Renwick Courthouse, then why are they even considering projects that could compromise that goal, let alone giving them primary consideration?
In closing, I would like to address Mr. Gerlach's protestations from the City Council session of March 14. He said that it is not a correct statement of fact that City Council wants to sell the Renwick Courthouse to private developers. I agree that City Council has never made an official motion to that end, but they have also never made a motion barring such actions. When all of the reports and discussion revolve around a project that would necessitate some form of private ownership, it gives the impression that public ownership is not the real priority. And if City Council wants to change that perception, I would suggest much more clarity of intent going forward.
Seth Casana is a musician and longtime resident of Fredericksburg.
A version of this article was originally presented as public comment to Fredericksburg City Council on March 28, 2023.
