City releases short list for 2025 Heritage Preservation Grant

Bids for the city’s Heritage Preservation Grant are in, and staffers are circling in on the lucky landmarks deemed worthy to snag a slice of the pie.

Heritage Tourism Division Manager Melissa Alvarado stopped by last week’s meeting of the Historic Landmark Commission to run through the short list of recommendees, each with their own proposal for repairs or programming to drum up visitors. Using revenue from Austin’s Hotel Occupancy Tax, the grant offers occupants of historic sites anywhere from $15,000 to $250,000 per project.

This year, the city has identified 20 eligible projects, starring an eclectic mix of local businesses and nonprofits that run the gamut from dive bar to cemetery.

If approved by Council, the Austin Theater Alliance will land funding for ongoing renovations at the Paramount and Stateside theaters, advancing plans to combine the two buildings into a new and improved historic venue. For now, the nonprofit hopes to use the funds to continue restoring the buildings’ aging windows, doors and transoms, as well as replacing the iconic “Paramount” sign with an easier-to-maintain LED replica.

The list would also see grant money go toward expansion of the Austin History Center, whose growing archives have made its downtown headquarters increasingly cramped for space. As they begin to move some operations to the John Henry Faulk Building next door, the city historians hope to use funds to flesh out plans for an expanded Archival and Research Campus, complete with a first-floor gallery, a rooftop garden and an outdoor plaza open to the public.

Funding is also on the table for the Barton Springs Bathhouse, which made headlines last year after City Council’s vote for its renaming after civil rights activist Joan Means Khabele. While extensive renovations of the structure are well underway, the grant is poised to finance an animated history of the Springs for display in its forthcoming gallery space, with the help of documentary filmmaker Karen Kocher.

In Northeast Austin, the grant could jump-start a bright new future for the St. John Regular Baptist Association, whose vacant sanctuary at 7501 Blessing Ave. has lately served as temporary shelter for people in the area who are homeless. If approved, the project would kick off planning for a revitalized community center offering a food pantry, employment and medical services, and even a complex of affordable tiny homes, a full-circle moment for the former resource center.

Oakwood Cemetery has also made this list, with plans to fund a podcast series exploring the story of Jacob Fontaine, a freed slave turned minister whose trailblazing legacy remains in landmarks across Austin. The project will join the wealth of resources emerging from ongoing research at the site.

History buffs can also look forward to capital improvements at museums like the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Flower Hill Center, which are both hard at work opening new areas to the public. Fans of legacy businesses like Deep Eddy Cabaret and East Austin’s Green and White Grocery also stand to gain, with both securing recommendations to fund repairs.

Readers can check out the full list of recommended projects here.

Photo by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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