We lost! Sorry. I blame it on myself. We didn’t win the Preservation Award. Even though the Oakland Apartments was rated as the most endangered building in Minnesota after AND before the fire, I was unable to communicate the significance of the project in 500 words or less to the six judges. The feedback from the committee was that I needed more pretty pictures. I was limited to 12 pictures, and instead of including a pretty picture of the restored stained glass windows, I chose to focus on the scope, difficulty, and process. Where it came from: a burned out shell on countless most endangered preservation lists, and how it got saved: prioritization by the City and a huge grassroots… More