Sometimes, its the small things that make it feel like there is movement afoot

Yesterday in City Council, there was lots of heated debate about the Public Service Board and the stormwater utility district and user fees for senior aerobics classes. We didn't get out of the meeting until 4:30 P.M. We didn't break for lunch. The meeting was punctuated every now and then by some drama (Eddie Holguin wanted some advice on how to subpoena Ed Archuleta while an embarrassed council walked out leaving him without a quorum) or a temporary loss of cool (Ray Gilbert screamed, Steve Ortega screamed back, the mayor intervened).

Buried in yesterday's marathon meeting was a request by the owners of 300 Florence to put an historic overlay on their property. The owners are converting an old Trost designed warehouse into downtown lofts. The item was moved and approved with almost no comment or conversation. No passions were inflamed. There was no drama.

There should have been.

This was the first time in over a decade that a property owner has voluntarily signed up to put their property under an historic overlay. With an historic overlay comes a whole host of additional obligations and processes aimed at preserving the architectural significance of a building. It used to be if the City even whispered historic overlay to a property owner, the property owner would lawyer up and charge down to city council to beat those efforts down with a stick.

But we've been trying to change all of that. We re-wrote the historic preservation ordinance to streamline the process and to include tax incentives for both commerical and residential property owners who are willing to invest in old buildings. We waived the $1500 fee required to sign up for an historic overlay. We hired a full time Historic Preservation Officer dedicated to the preservation of our historic assets, rather than depend on a city planner with a pile of other work to do. This last budget cycle we gave the HPO some more staff support. We've been fixing the city's administrative processes which seemed to make it easy for property owners to ignore their obligations under the historic preservation ordinance, but very hard and time consuming and mind numbing for property owners who wanted to do the right thing. We told the City that if we were going to make property owners comply with the historic preservation ordinance that city departments had to do the same with parks and public space in historic districts.

We still have a lot more to do, but a lot of good work has been done so that people who want to invest in preserving an historic property view the City as an ally and a partner in that effort.