By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — By making historic preservation as simple, affordable and easy as possible, advocates said Salisbury can attract people to older neighborhoods and grow the city without annexation.
The city has unveiled the draft Historic Preservation Master Plan, including 33 pages of recommendations with the ultimate goal of putting more people in historic homes.
“I think many people presume that plans like this are somehow going to impose more restrictions on homeowners,”said Jason Walser, who attended Monday’s event and serves on the master plan steering committee. “It’s encouraging to me to see how much attention has been paid to try to make restoration and ownership of historic homes easier, instead of harder.”
When homeowners renovate older homes in local historic districts, they must receive the city’s blessing for major changes to the exterior of a structure. Walser, leader of the LandTrust for Central North Carolina, said he’s pleased the draft plan suggests allowing more use of green and sustainable building materials.
Consultant Aaron Arnett and the steering committee have worked for five months on the draft, which would streamline the preservation permit process, find new ways for organizations to work together and educate people about historic preservation.
The goal isn’t to help people win approval for their suggested changes. About 99 percent of the 160 applicants won approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission last year, City Planner Janet Gapen said.
Rather, the object is to make the process easier, faster and less intimidating so more people will buy older homes and fix them up.
“If there is a perception that this is a difficult process, it might deter people from moving into historic districts,” Gapen said.
As energy costs increase, people move to urban areas to save gas and live closer to schools, shopping and other amenities, City Planner Joe Morris said.
Allowing solar panels, small wind-energy generators and even replacement windows will encourage newcomers to consider historic homes, Morris said.
The draft — with five elements, 21 outcomes and 115 specific recommendations — is far from complete, Arnett said. He asked residents to read the document and comment at www.salisburyplan.ning.com.
He will use public input to tweak the plan, which will undergo additional public scrutiny before he presents it to City Council this summer.
The most popular recommendations Monday night included:
• Encourage the use of green and sustainable preservation practices, such as solar panels, alternative building materials and even replacement windows, rarely allowed in local historic districts
• Create and enforce a demolition-by-neglect ordinance
• Create simple, easy-to-understand preservation codes and ordinances, and amend guidelines to make them more user-friendly
• Offer preservation incentives for affordable housing
• Establish an historic neighborhood resource program
• Enhance planning efforts, including an infrastructure survey, open space and tree preservation, traffic and circulation and using preservation element in current and future plans
• Provide resources and information about preservation to homeowners, Realtors, homebuyers and landlords — an annual tax credit workshop, a formal disclosure process, online preservation resource hub, architectural salvage store, list available/vacant historic buildings
• Develop preservation strategies tailored to each historic district, especially West End/Livingstone College and Brooklyn-South Square
• Update inventories of historic structures throughout the city
• Better cooperation between preservation partners
• Understand preservation resources and develop a strategy to take advantage of them
Contact reporter Emily Ford at 704-797-4264.