The City Council is poised to raise the historic landmark application fee 1000% Tuesday night. While the Historic Preservation Commission approved doubling the fee (from $50 to $100), City Staff wants to raise it to $500. They will also increase fees for a Certificate of Appropriateness from $25 to $120 for administrative certificates, and $250 for non-administrative certificates.
The given reason is to increase revenue to the City, but let’s not fool ourselves. This will bring little additional money into city coffers. The real effect (and I believe the intended effect) will be to reduce historic landmark applications and increase the number of unapproved modifications to historic properties. The council has been undermining the historic preservation ordinance more and more blatantly as of late — not designating buildings that are clearly historic, and delisting structures that are already “protected,” meaning nothing is really protected anymore if the political forces are strong enough.
Meanwhile, still waiting in the wings is a rewriting of the ordinance itself, which is slated to be deferred once again on Tuesday.
UPDATE: I have been informed by a reliable source that “the matter of the fee increases for Historic Preservation will be deferred tomorrow night until April.”
Thanks for this post, CJ. It should be an issue in the spring election.
And what a tribute to Les Kenyon, whose wonderful memorial service was yesterday, Jan. 23. I guess it’s been decided that with him gone, Peoria can be turned into a giant parking lot.
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Inscription on the gates to Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The clique that runs the City has decided historic preservation is not needed. Get with the program, Elaine, they know best. Disssnt is not tolerated anymore. You should know that.
WAIT ONE MINUTE!
Where are the museum people? Aren’t they going to be tasked with preserving Peoria’s history!?! Where are the collaborative partners? African American Museum, Peoria Historical Society, Wheels O’ Time, etc!?!
Unless……
Maybe these organizations have been infiltrated by the same “clique” The Mouse just wrote about? I am thinking the board members of all of these esteemed organizations are the same people who sit on our city council and/or call the shots in Peoria.
I love it when all of these supposed ‘pillars of the community’ consistently put ‘self’ before ‘community.’
I am not sure that the increase in price will deter. If you have the money already to purchase and rehab a historic home this is still a small amount. However, I do agree that much with the increase in business taxes, fees, etc coupled with the state increases it makes Peoria even less affordable a place to live and to do business.
Election issues are “older neighborhoods”, crime and being business friendly. Each council election the platforms are the same. We know what three of the candidates have done to make things either better or worse in those areas, they need to explain their decisions to the voters. The other 7 need concrete, viable solutions that they can not only sell to the voters, but at least 5 other council persons to make their discourse a reality.
Peorians don’t care about historic sites and that is reflected in the representatives that serve us on the Council. To most people, these are dumps. Hell, Peoria would tear down the Taj Mahal to allow Joesph build a strip mall will a Starbucks in it no matter how many plaques it had on it.
Elaine, Please help us to make sure it IS an issue in the upcoming election!
Paul, what a ridiculous statement! Do you think every historic home is a million dollar house? Or that every resident of a historic district is a millionaire? I think $250 has the same value to me as it does to you.
It’s not a ridculous statement, look at the property values in the historic sections of town. and/or the cost of rehabbing to meet the criteria of the historical districts. I am not seeing much poverty.
Is the purpose of restoring historical buildings to make a profit or to preserve a sense of tradition and history?
I would think the city and county would want to ENcourage preservation not penalize it and DIScourage it.
They should raise the fees for greenfield construction by 1000% and leave the renovations fees alone.
Historic preservation is not needed, indeed!
Have a look at all the historic buildings deemed not worth saving in Peoria’s (unofficial) sister city:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0usW0kw2Dw
Welcome to Peoria’s future. Could you imagine a 140 million dollar museum nestled in-between such buildings? Well done, gentlemen!
Yes, it most certainly is ridiculous, Paul.
Historic preservation is not the province of the wealthy. Why would you want to inject class issues ?
Drive down Flora or Ellis or through my neighborhood.
Better yet, come buy and rehab the house two doors from mine. It’s listed at $35K and you can buy it for $30K.
Historic preservation INCREASES property values as well as providing a sense of history and tradition, and beauty. It’s true elsewhere and also true in Peoria. But some of the Peoria establishment has yet to learn that truth.
It’s not only for the rich. If done right it benefits everyone. Charleston, SC, the Soulard district in St. Louis, and many other places prove it. Visit them and see for yourself.
Paul,
the cost of the house may be inexpensive, but what about the restoration and note that the restoration has to meet the critieria of the historic distric. In our last in person discussion we talked about the house in High Wine that used vinyl siding as part of fixing the house up. we talked about the cost of restoring houses to specifications/methods by those criteria. the comment you made about the owners was “they can certainly afford it”. We were asked to consider purchasing a house in Moss Bradley once. The price of the house was 60K, but the rehab costs were well beyond what we could afford. So yes, you need to have financial resources or perhaps be gifted in doing your own home repairs, regardless there is cost. Our house is 88 years old, but not in a historic district. Everything that has to be done to it is a custom job that we have to figure out how to get the the repairs down we need within our budget. There is no way we could afford to rehab the entire house and on top of it do it in the manner to restore everything to the original.
Why pick on Joseph, Emtronics? The City would do the same for two or three other developers, especially if they could give away some tax dollars in the process.
Thanks for the video, James. The only thing they left off was the big casino in East STL. To paraphrase Fast Eddie Rendell (Gov. of PA), if people are going to lose thier homes at the gambling table, they might as well do it right here in Illinois.
Those proposed fees will only lead to a high percentage of non-compliance in historic districts. The City should be encouraging and fostering the restoration of it’s older neighborhoods instead of punishing us with enormous fees for restoring these old homes we love. Many cities with historic districts have NO FEES for Certificates of Appropriateness because they understand the benefit of having historic neighborhoods.
The same could be said for all the business fees, the natural gas tax, and what I can only predict after the elections, a property tax increase. They are not going to shore up a $13 million dollar defecit with just staff layoffs, plus we will need to fund the gold plated contract for the new city manager. I am not against historic preservation, but we are all taking hits, including non profits, due to our inability to fund what we need, but have blank checks for what some want. My guess is the fee increases will go through, and then a couple of years from now, when everyone forgets there will the save the older neighborhoods cry from people running and all is forgetten, like a couple of years ago.
Where was the historic society when that 150 yo tree was torn down to make room for Aspen Dental and Vitamin Shoppe? Or is that out of their scope? Just man-made structures?
Just threw a name out there
Yes, the powers that be dropped the historic preservation ‘ball’ yet again. This is one of the main reasons listening to those buffoons rant on about the benefits of the new museum disturbed me as it did. They preached on about the necessity of this ‘thing’ when the rest of the city was falling down around their ears!
You had every corporate heavy wanna be, local business tycoon, self-proclaimed ‘civic’ leader, and otherwise do-gooder, stepping forward and telling us why the PRM will save not only our economy, but…oh yeah, we almost forgot…our history [what ever that is?].
I think Paul has a point in that alot of posters on this site really have no idea the amount of cost involved in saving old houses. I am a trade person and I can tell you right now that to rewire some of those homes on moss or in the randoulph or run new plumbing or put in a heat system you are looking at at least 20k right up front….
I mean some of the houses that are on flora and orange st etc they would be an all but gut rehab down to the studs…we are talking about basically building a new house on the site…
So yeah maybe that house is 20k but most people in the middle class cant even think about funding the needed repairs.
I agree with Charlie in that the importance of the project is not to make money but unfortunately the cost is often much greater then what the average person can afford.