Prime-Time Partnership

The National Trust pairs with Home & Garden Television to broadcast the preservation message to new audiences nationwide.

By WILLA REINHARD

The Far East Building's famous sign (Wataru Ebihara)

The future looked grim for the Far East Building, a 1909 hotel, storefront, and restaurant in Los Angeles noted for its massive arched windows and a 1934 vertical "Chop Suey" sign. Once the premiere gathering place for L.A.'s Little Tokyo community, the three-story brick structure was damaged in the Northridge earthquake of 1994 and then stood vacant. Last year, however, the Little Tokyo Service Center, a neighborhood development corporation, began renovations. And this year, thanks to a groundbreaking partnership between the National Trust and Home & Garden Television, the plight of the historic building, along with 11 other significant sites across the country, will be brought to the attention of millions of cable subscribers.

Restore America—A Salute to Preservation is a public affairs initiative that uses on-air and on-line programming to raise awareness and support for rescuing the country's most treasured historic places. Trust President Richard Moe announced the initiative in October at the annual National Preservation Conference in Cleveland. "HGTV is one of the nation's top resources for home and garden, restoration, and preservation information," he said. "It's a very credible source of support for us, complementing recognition and support we've received this year from the White House and the Advertising Council."

The project was conceived when HGTV, headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn., approached the Trust for recommendations for historic places to feature on its popular series "Restore America," a weekly half-hour show featuring restoration projects throughout the country.

"We at the Trust began to talk to the HGTV people about Save America's Treasures, and interest just grew," says Beth Newburger, the Trust's director of communications. (Save America's Treasures is a partnership between the National Park Service and the National Trust established in 1998 to channel public and private funds into the preservation of important cultural sites.) Deciding which places to include was a collaboration resulting in the list of 12 sites that attest to the wide scope of preservation work, including Liberty Theater, a 1920s movie palace in Astoria, Ore.; Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Martin Luther King Jr. civil rights landmark in Atlanta; and San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers, the oldest public conservatory in the Western Hemisphere. Also among the dozen are two of the Trust's historic sites—the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City.

HGTV will donate $1 million toward restoration of the 12 properties. A celebrity-hosted one-hour television special on July 4 will announce the initiative. The next weekend kicks off the regular "Restore America" series, entering its fifth season, and the show will feature all of the selected sites during the year, one per program. Sixty-second vignettes, focusing on a new locale each month, will air several times a day. A 30-second public service announcement will explain the mission of the National Trust and the need for preservation nationwide. And the network's Web site, which brings in 2.5 million visitors per month, will host information about the Salute to Preservation venture, linking to the National Trust Web site for those who want to learn more about preservation activities or become Trust members.

The HGTV venture may be the Trust's most ambitious corporate partnership to date, but the organization has long realized the benefits of hooking up with nationally recognized business leaders. "In addition to unrestricted operating revenue to fund our important work, these partnerships have made the Trust more visible among audiences who might not otherwise know who we are or what we do," says Miriam Lenett, the Trust's director of corporate marketing.

Among current corporate alliances, Chubb Insurance Group offers historic-house owners and Trust members coverage to protect against the risks of owning, restoring, and living in a historic property; the Historic Real Estate Training Program, sponsored by ERA Franchise Systems, teaches real estate professionals about preservation—architectural styles, for example—to give them an edge in buying and selling historic structures; Avon's Saving Lives, Saving Communities, a partnership with the Trust's Main Street Center, raises awareness about breast cancer in Main Street communities; and Valspar Paint has developed American Tradition, a color palette inspired by the Trust's historic sites and its Historic Hotels of America. (The paints are sold only at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse.)

As for the most recent corporate project, both parties are enthusiastic about the HGTV partnership's possibilities. "To us, it just makes sense to combine with the history, the expertise, and the great work of the National Trust," says Burton Jablin, president of HGTV. "It really is the perfect match for bringing preservation issues to even more people."

From the Trust's perspective, the network's broad reach into 80 million households gives the organization leverage to reach a huge new audience. "This will have an enormous impact on our ability to get the message out there on a daily basis that there's a need for people to recognize the importance these places have in our national identity," says Newburger. "HGTV has made preservation and the National Trust their cause, just as Avon's cause is breast cancer and Jerry Lewis' is muscular dystrophy. We are what they want to build."

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