Houston doesn't have much patience for memories. The only permanent thing here, is change. "Alles ist ein andres nun," Goethe laments. Everything is another. Everything is different.

That's Houston.

Houston tears down. Houston starts over. And then Houston tears down again. Remembering the Houston that used to be is a cherished community tradition, like compulsively bragging about diversity, or pretending you frequent Discovery Green.

Once in a while, a building evades the wrecking ball and suffers the indignity of gradual decline, turned into a pawnshop or storefront church or just left alone, vandals and varmints and the relentless weather orchestrating a slow demolition. It sits, sun-bleached and forlorn, like the deposed President For Life of some obscure tropical nation, strung up by his executioners to remind the citizenry not to mess with the junta.

A couple of weeks back, bulldozers knocked down the Bronze Peacock. Sixty years ago, the Peacock was the jewel of the Chitlin' Circuit, a loose collection of juke joints, road houses, and night clubs that spanned the South, and gave artists from Duke Ellington to B.B. King a place to perform, free from the insults and indignities of Jim Crow. Slick Don Robey owned the Peacock. Robey was a gangster and Robey was a crook, but he ran a classy joint: In the mid-'50s, Houston was as important to rhythm and blues as Memphis or Motown. The epicenter of all that music, of all that history, was the Bronze Peacock.

The Peacock is gone, just a slab swept clean of rubble on a street corner that has seen better days, but it was forgotten decades before the wreckers came, sic transit gloria Houston.

Some of us feel the sting of such losses. Some of us understand that memory matters, that history is flesh and blood and spittle and sweat. It's songs and stories and shouts and soft whispered words of couples in love. And history is bricks and stones, nails and mortar, the rooms where the flesh pressed, the blood spilt, the songs and shouts and soft whispered words were voiced, rooms that still faintly hum with the energy of events long passed. Others don't have any time for any of that.

It is difficult to hold onto history in a city that doesn't have much patience for memories. Houston is a sportscar without rearview mirrors: You can't look back, so you might as well just floor it and hope for the best.

GARY ELKINS represents Jersey Village in the Texas State legislature. Gary Elkins is one of those people who doesn't have much patience for memories. This session, Elkins proposed legislation, HB 3418 — call it "The Erasing Texas History Act" — that would make it even easier for corporations and individuals to level historic sites across the state.

Elkins' bill carries three primary features: First, in yet another example of Texas Legislature hegemony, the bill overrides significant portions of historic preservation laws or zoning regulations enacted by municipal governments, unless they meet state-imposed criteria, including the requirement that the site must be associated with an incident "widely recognized as a historical event."

Second, any "historical" designation approved by any zoning board, planning commission, city council must pass by a three-fourths margin, or the designation is invalid.

Third, local governments have a thirty-day window to approve or reject requests to "construct, reconstruct, alter, or raze a building or other structure in a designated place or area of historical, cultural, or architectural importance or significance." If the government hasn't issued an official decision within 30 days, the request is automatically approved.

Historic preservation is a contentious issue. In 2012, Houston City Council established the Germantown Historic District, a charming little knot of Craftsman-style homes and tree-canopied streets, just north of downtown, near the Woodland Heights. The measure passed on an 11-5 vote — 68 percent — after meeting the City's requirement that at least 67 percent of the community's homeowners support the ordinance. Under the Elkins standard, there would be no Germantown Historic District.

When Germantown received its designation, several residents expressed vocal opposition, arguing that their property rights were being impeded. Then-District H Councilman Ed Gonzalez suggested that "a more modern city" like Houston lacked the civic will to spend much time on historic preservation. City Council was deeply divided over the vote. Passing a historic preservation ordinance with 67 percent of the vote is an act of staggering political achievement. Passing one with 75 percent of the vote is a virtual impossibility.

Supporters of the Elkins bill argue that it's a matter of personal freedom: Historic preservation designations put heavy restrictions on homeowners' ability to improve or alter their property, and impose design standards that add knee-buckling expense to the cost of renovations.

Detractors counter that local boards are geared to work with homeowners — in 2013, 84 percent of the renovation proposals submitted to the Houston Historic Preservation Office were approved with no revisions — and that imposing a state-mandated "one size fits all" standard undermines the efforts of local agencies to preserve the history and heritage of their communities.

Even in Houston, a city with no patience for memories, a city that loves its bulldozers, historic preservation has gained a toehold. Twenty-two neighborhoods enjoy "historic district" status. Granted, most of them are either in the Heights or Midtown-adjacent, but it's still 22 neighborhoods. The City of Houston Office of Historic Preservation keeps a list of the buildings, homes, and landmarks designated by the City as "landmarks, protected landmarks, or archaeological sites." There are hundreds of locations on the list, everywhere from the 1940 Houston Municipal Air Terminal to the Hirzel-von Haxthausen House in the First Ward. I have no idea who the Hirzels and von Haxthausens were, but their home is charming, with elegantly curving eaves and a wraparound porch and a couple of monstrously ugly rows of townhomes for neighbors.

Under the Elkins bill, local communities would not have the authority to protect buildings like the Hirzel-von Haxthausen House. No one famous lived there. Nothing famous happened there. There is no way that charming little home fits the "widely recognized as historical" standard. And if some developer wanted to breeze in and buy the place so that he could build another row of hideous townhomes, no one could stop him.

ELKINS' LEGISLATIVE record has all the historical gravitas of a Chevron station on the Eastex: He doesn't say much, doesn't do much, and when does he manage to sponsor a bill, it's usually intended to plump business interests, most notably the payday loan racket.

HB 3418 is a sop to developers, anxious to bypass pesky local agencies. It's designed to overwhelm already drowning planning commissions, zoning boards, and municipal governments. It isn't about making communities better. It isn't even about being sensitive to property rights. It's a jackboot move, a hard, heavy kick to the solar plexus of neighborhoods like Germantown, and places like the Hirzel-von Haxthausen House, and every place in this state where people understand that our story, our shouts and sighs, our blood and sweat and spittle and songs, are trapped in the bricks and mortars of our old buildings. Those places are us. And when they disappear, part of our community does, too.

Using a broad, vaguely worded standard — just what does "widely known" mean? — to address the question of what's historically significant to a community is a little like rewriting Hamlet entirely in emojis: a lot of really important stuff is going to be lost. And we will be left with a state that's little more than the affable hell of FM 518 at Highway 288, traffic and pavement and an endless supply of family-friendly chain restaurants, serving an awful pastiche of Tex-Mex.

Buildings come and buildings go, especially in Houston. There will always be another Shamrock Hotel, another Sam Houston Coliseum, lamented long after their reduction to rubble. There will always be another Bronze Peacock, moldering in obscurity. The danger of the Elkins bill is that it makes forgetting easy. It makes it easy to turn almost any place, no matter its beauty, no matter its story, into another pile of rubble. In a place with no patience for memories, no place is sacred.

ONCE YOU start erasing history, who knows where it ends? Sometime in the not-far-off future, I see a couple of perky young entrepreneurs, Trey and Dylan, fresh out of business school and ready to make their mark, standing in front of the Cradle of Texas Liberty:

"So whaddaya think?" asks Trey, expectantly.

"Dude," replies Dylan. "I think this is, like, the Alamo. You want to turn the Alamo into a restaurant?"

"Yeah, man, it's the Alamo. It's also some primo real estate, friend. Where else are we gonna find a property like this in downtown San Antone?"

"But, something important happened here, I'm pretty sure."

"Yeah, yeah, people died. It was sad. That was, like, a hundred years ago. It's in the past, man. Who remembers? Since the Legislature made history an elective, nobody even talks about this stuff anymore."

Dylan gathers speed. "Consider the possibilities. I'm not thinking restaurant; I'm thinking BIG restaurant. With a big sign, in one of those happy, playful fonts, like Flora Mambo, so people know they're supposed to have a good time. We can save the walls, some of them at least: People like that distressed stone look. It makes things feel warm and authentic. And the menu will be Tex-Mex, of course, because, well, San Antonio."

Trey fingers his UT ring. His eyes light up. "We can call it Casey Dilla's," he says. "Better yet, Casey Dilla's Cantina and Happy Family Funtime Zone! Where the Margaritas Go On Forever, and the Fiesta Never Ends!"

"Perfect!" Dylan slaps his partner on the back. "We'll have a gigantic cartoon drawing of Casey on the wall. He's an armadillo, of course. With a sombrero. And a pencil thin moustache. And he's winking. And playing maracas. And wearing one of those flouncy shirts, with the billowy sleeves. People will LOVE it! Can you say, 'Franchise opportunities available'? Alamo? By the time we're done, it will be more like 'Al and who?'"

Trey looks somber. "Dude, we do need to remember the Alamo. I think that's a state law or something." Instantly, he brightens. "Maybe we could create a signature dessert, something like 'Brownie Al-a-mo'." It will be a gigantic, Texas-shaped brownie, topped with a Texas-sized scoop of Blue Bell vanilla."

Buildings matter. Heritage matters. Memories matter, even though developers have no patience for them. I hope the state legislature remembers that.

Cort McMurray is a Houston businessman and a frequent contributor to Gray Matters.

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