While the Jefferson City Council pushed for local historic districts during Tuesday's discussions about the demolition ordinance, the districts are not the only tools available to protect historic properties in Jefferson City.
After the council approved the demolition ordinance last week, city staff said they will begin improving the city's local historic district ordinance as there are zero local historic districts currently in the city limits. The current ordinance requires an application have 75 percent notarized signatures from property owners and design guidelines.
As city staff explores local historic districts, there are other options available to protect historic features in Jefferson City, such as overlay and National Register historic districts.
Jefferson City Planner I Ian Zollinger said even though the overlay and historical districts differ, they are tools "to help protect and to preserve" historical buildings and places.
"We understand that these historical buildings are important to us so we really have to use tools that we're allowed to use by law to protect these places and really let us kind of define ourselves as Jefferson City," he said.
Overlay districts
While a local historic district focuses on preserving the history of a neighborhood, an overlay district focuses on regulating the architecture of the area by setting architectural requirements.
The city established the Capitol Avenue Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District in April, which Jefferson City Senior Planner Eric Barron said was suggested in the Central East Side Neighborhood Plan, adopted in 2006. Barron added when establishing the building requirements for that overlay district, city staff looked at the current architecture in the area and formed the guidelines around those.
"The (Capitol Avenue) overlay district is not looking at the history of a structure. It's looking at the architecture of the area, which in our case happens to be historic," he said. "The architecture is based in history, but (the overlay district is) not a historic preservation type of thing. It wants to make sure new structures and changes to structures fit in with the architecture of the area."
Barron said the primary difference between overlay districts and local historic districts is the certificate of appropriateness process.
Overlay districts do not require a certificate of appropriateness. When a property owner in an overlay district wants to make modifications to his or her property, he or she must meet the design requirements in that overlay district. If the modification meets all of the design requirements, Barron said it will be allowed.
With a certificate of appropriateness, it's more subjective in that if a property owner wants to make modification to a home in a local historic district, he or she has to bring the application to the Jefferson City Historic Preservation Commission, which will look at the nature of the modification and if it fits with the historical nature of the home and district.
"In an overlay district scenario, the law is not concerned about exactly what the building looks like, but really that it meets the requirements," Barron said. "Switching out certain elements for other elements is a little bit easier to do, whereas in a historic district, those elements may be very precious in terms of the history of the building, so switching them out is a very big deal. Taking off a historic porch or something to replace it with a new one could be a very big deal in a historical view, whereas in an overlay district, if you're taking one off and putting on another one, the requirement is to have a porch and for it to look like a porch."
There can be a variety of overlay districts, ranging from an airport to flood overlay district. Cities can also establish a conservation overlay district, of which Jefferson City has two: Capitol Avenue Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District and the Lower Jefferson Conservation Overlay District.
While the Capitol Avenue Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District was established through a neighborhood plan, the Lower Jefferson Conservation Overlay District was not.
To establish the Lower Jefferson Conservation District, the application required 50 percent of property owner signatures and design guidelines, Jefferson City Neighborhood Services Manager Jayme Abbott said. Barron added these design guidelines are recommendations, not requirements like the ones for the Capitol Avenue Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District.
Barron said in the future, city staff will explore creating an overlay district for East High Street, which was recommended in the Central East Side Neighborhood Plan, as well as Dunklin Street as part of the Historic Southside/Old Munichburg District and Neighborhood Plan. The southside plan also recommends a commercial node at Chestnut street, which would be protected by an overlay district that requires buildings be compatible with nearby Lincoln University.
National Register
The National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is similar to local historic districts with one key difference - there are zero mandated property owner requirements as it is an "honorary designation," Abbott said. This means if Jefferson City establishes a National Register historical district, the city cannot start placing requirements on the district without public input.
"There's no strings attached to (a National Register district)," Abbott said. "There's no compliance so property owners can still do what they do with their own funds. (With) a local historic district, there's going to be strings attached. If you sign on saying, 'Yes, I agree to these requirements,' there's strings attached. So therefore, a city cannot just take a National Register federal district and say, 'You know what? That's automatically a local historic district,' because then there's a lack of due process."
There are nine National Register historic districts in Jefferson City. The most recent is the Moreau Drive Historic District in 2013, which includes Moreau and Elmerine drives, Fairmount Boulevard, Oakwood and Moreland avenues, and Fairmount Court.
Residents can apply for an area to be a National Register historic district, and the application must contain details on several historic homes and why the area would qualify as a historic district.
Future projects
Barron said city staff wants to clean up the current city code regarding local historic districts as it is vague and poorly worded. Jefferson City Planning and Protective Services Director Sonny Sanders added there is lack of guidance when enforcing the districts, too.
As part of reworking that ordinance, city staff will discuss the different ways a local historic district could be created, as well as ways to improve the current certificate of appropriateness process.
City staff plans to also look at possible areas that could be deemed local historic districts. Abbott said the Historic Preservation Commission applied for a grant that requires the commission to identify areas where local historic districts would be appropriate.