by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
The Task Force for Historic Downtown Preservation wants to help sweeten the honey for potential downtown developers by making it easier for them to receive financial incentives when renovating older buildings. The task force wants to create a national register historic district within downtown, which could entitle developers to a tax credit for refurbishing historically significant buildings.
“We want the City to consider turning an area into a national register historic district as a means of promoting reuse of older downtown buildings,” said Jerry Spinks, chair of the task force. “What we’re doing is doing away with some of the paperwork for individual property owners.”
Individual buildings designated on the national historic register or clumps of buildings within a district are eligible for a 20 percent tax credit for renovations performed on the structures, provided they are not individual residences. The National Park Service is the cognizant government agency that manages the national historic register.
L.B. Jax developers applied for the historic designation at 113 W. Adams St. as an individual building when they began plans to convert the property into lofts.
“Our building has been determined to be eligible,” said Lisa King of L.B. Jax and task force member. “But we had to go through the process of applying.”
A historic district would alleviate future developers and property owners of paying the $2,000 to $5,000 in consultants’ fees to fill out the application paperwork and other necessary legwork.
One hurdle the task force, and ultimately the City, would have to overcome is the misconception of what a national register historic district means.
“Just because it has ‘national’ on it, people are going to think the Feds are going to come in and tell you what to do,” said King. “I can tell you there is no downside to this. I think people don’t understand it because it’s national and people think it’s stricter.”
Unlike local preservation districts, which unwaveringly mandate paint color and facade treatments, the national requirements are much more passive. If a developer chooses not to acknowledge a building’s historic significance through renovation or demolition, it may do so without penalty but receives not tax credit. If a developer wants the tax credit, then it must adhere to the renovation requirements laid out by the National Park Service. Developers may have to spend more money up front to adhere to the Park Service’s standards. If they are not met the tax credit could be lost.
“It’s an elective program,” said Gary Sachau, architectural historian with the National Park Service. “It’s basically to preserve the historic character of buildings, in a nutshell.”
For a district to be designated, Sachau said there must be the majority of the buildings must be over 50 years old and must hold some degree of significance. Typically, it requires a high level of research and documentation up front to identify targeted buildings within the proposed district.
Spinks anticipated it would cost between $15,000 and $30,000 to survey the downtown area and identify historically significant buildings targeted for the district.
Since the number of older buildings downtown is low-density, the task force will also explore dividing the core city into multiple historic districts.
“Maybe we’ll have more than one,” said Spinks. “It decreases the credibility with a clump [of historic buildings] here and clump there in one large district.”
Spinks said affected property owners would be contacted during the process of obtaining the national register historic district. Those who oppose can do so formally. All opposition will be considered before a final decision is made.