Boulder – The City Council has taken a step toward giving property owners more of a voice when it considers whether to designate their neighborhoods as historic districts.
But for some residents, that voice isn’t nearly loud enough to balance the added regulations that come with such designations.
Several residents who attended a recent City Council meeting said they wanted to see historic districts designated only if a majority of residents in the proposed district approve of it.
“People work hard; they pay a lot for their property,” said Ronald Grey, who has lived in his home on University Hill for 30 years. “So please consider that the property owners should have some say and that 51 percent (approval) is not too much to ask.”
Instead, the City Council decided to require a survey of residents in the proposed district but not to make that survey binding.
The changes still must undergo a third reading in the coming weeks.
“This is, for me, a positive step forward,” Mayor Mark Ruzzin said. “It does that balancing act in an appropriate fashion.”
The Boulder controversy reaches back four years to when the city considered including 900 properties on University Hill in what would have been one of the largest historic districts in the state. Residents protested in droves, fearing that historic-district regulations would severely restrict the updates they could make to their homes, and city leaders decided to study whether to change the historic preservation ordinance.
There are approximately 2,000 properties in areas that could be designated as historic in Boulder, which already has nine historic districts and more than 130 historic landmarks.
In rejecting any form of required homeowner approval, Ruzzin and others said historic districts are important to the city as a whole, and the council should not be bound by the decisions of a few.
“Our historic resources are under much more pressure than they ever have been in the past,” Boulder Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board chairman Tim Plass said. “… We just don’t want to make it harder to preserve our historic heritage.”
Historic preservation proponents said city leaders took a long-range view in planning for the good of the community.
“It is their duty to protect the history and the neighborhoods of Boulder,” said Kathryn Barth, a Boulder architect. “I think they did a good job.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
