Do these homes frighten you? Does their lack of pretension offend your sensibilities? Do their modest proportions fill you with an unsettling sense of dread and leave you counting down the days until an old couch or broken refrigerator winds up on the porch?

Do you fear the criminal element surely lurking inside?

My gut says no. In fact, if anything, I’d guess that most folks would consider these homes a fairly representative sample of the charm we Decaturites like to boast about. And that’s ironic, given that every one of them–along with hundreds of others not shown–would be illegal to build under our current zoning code.

Say whah? Read the rest of this entry »

At last night’s city commission meeting, the commission accepted a detailed Historic Resources Survey of Decatur (page 15 of pdf), compiled by Keystone Preservation Associates and Morrison Design, LLC.

At a cost of $35,000, the months-long survey, which documented every single parcel within the city limits, was one of the outcomes of the ugly clash between residents, city boards, cats and dogs over a proposed Oakhurst Historic District in 2007.  Among the many aspects of the initiative that confused and angered all parties was a lack of information on historic inventory within the neighborhood.

So the city ponied up the dough and funded an extensive survey that documented the entire city.  According to a letter to the commission by Planning Director Amanda Thompson…

This report will help the city move forward with several long term preservation goals including awareness and appreciation of Decatur’s historic resources by making the survey results available online and determining a timeline and cost proposal for creation of National Register listings.  We will also use the report to explore the world of heritage tourism and if that is a market the city is interested in pursuing.

Missing from the city’s stated goals is any mention of the creation of any additional local historic districts, which is the only way to physically regulate design in a neighborhood. (National Register status mainly provides tax incentives to residents to rehab property and creates red-tape for federal government-funded development)

That said, a portion of the survey was included among last night’s meeting materials and identifies 13 neighborhoods inside the city limits that would be eligible for some form of historic designation.  They are… Read the rest of this entry »

At tonight’s city commission meeting, the city is scheduled to award the historic resources survey to Keystone Preservation Associates and Morrison Design.

The $35,000 project will document all properties in Decatur outside of the historic districts with a digital photograph and a “property inventory sheet”. Once the survey is complete, Keystone and Morrison will produce a final report and public presentation of their findings and make recommendations for what is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

The project was conceived back in 2007, when controversy surrounding the proposed Oakhurst Historic District was even more confused by the fact that the city had no complete database of its built environment.

The AJC provides a few more details on the Decatur City Commission’s decision to cut off city staff support and funding from the Oakhurst Historic District effort.  Included are a few more quotes from Mayor Bill Floyd.

“Historic districts “are not the devil,” Floyd said. “But not everyone wants them. You want to do it to preserve history — not to keep out infill housing. You want to do it for the right reasons.”

Floyd said there wasn’t money in the budget to cover the cost of surveying Oakhurst homes and notify residents about the process. He also believes the preservation commission, which operates independently of the City Commission, erred when it expanded the district boundaries beyond the original proposal.”

In my own reaction to the commission’s decision, I explain why technically its too early to announce the death of the Oakhurst Historic District nomination.  However, without the political support of the commission this nomination will almost certainly die.

Additionally, expanding the district boundaries may have been a political error, but it wasn’t necessarily a technical one.

Comments?

GoDeKalb prematurely writes off the Oakhurst Historic District in a report from the Decatur’s City Commission meeting last night, where opponents and proponents of the Oakhurst Historic District debated for more than two hours. According to the article, “Decatur officials voted to direct the City Manager to limit the use of city resources in processing a new historic district encompassing the former City of Oakhurst as annexed into Decatur”.

While I personally don’t believe that an Oakhurst Historic District can ever be created in such a hostile environment (since it is the voter-elected City Commission that creates historic districts and not the HPC), this vote still can’t completely “put the brakes” on a Oakhurst nomination. This isn’t a process that was started or is really supported by city staff other than to field inquiries by residents, which it should do for all district nominations. This nomination could still move forward if the neighborhood itself completed a historic resource survey of the entire district, which would undoubtedly take a substantial amount of time, but could in fact be done. Then the often unfairly slandered Historic Preservation Commission could review the nomination and RECOMMEND to the city commission whether or not the district was indeed “historic”. So while this vote by the city to minimize staff involvement might set proponents of the neighborhood back, it doesn’t halt the nomination entirely.

The article goes on to say that “City Manager Peggy Merriss said the City Attorney advised that the Commissioners could not intervene in an application until the HPC made a recommendation to them under the current ordinance. The Commissioners approved a second motion to ask the staff to review the historic preservation ordinance and to make recommendations on how to amend it.”

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