Local history buffs are encouraging leaders to consider steps that could help protect the south metro community’s historic buildings and neighborhoods.
Members of are expected to meet with the City Council next month to discuss efforts advocates feel will help local historic buildings and homes at a time when the city is seeing old structures knocked down to .
Their goals include getting language that encourages historic preservation written into the city comprehensive plan, establishing a historic preservation commission that could lead efforts to inventory historic structures — as neighboring Littleton — and, eventually, opening a .
Englewood incorporated in 1903. Outside of a horse trolley preserved in the Civic Center lobby, there are few monuments to local history, society members argue.
“We’ve been –probably for as long as we’ve been around – trying to share that Englewood has a most unique history and many of our historic buildings have been taken down,” Doug Cohn, the society’s director of programming, said last week.
Cohn said the society board members were surprised this spring when a draft of the city’s comprehensive plan update was released that removed several references to providing incentives to encourage historic preservation that were included in an earlier draft. Cohn said he had hoped the city would look at becoming a , a federal designation that opens municipalities willing to meet certain standards to state-administered grant funding for preservation efforts.
“The concern expressed by some of our Council members is that private property rights are a core value, and we don’t want to trample that,” Cohn said of the certified local government process. “We do want to respect that and at the same time see what we can do in saving some of our local history.”
Englewood Community Development Director Brad Power said the City Council hasn’t adopted the comprehensive plan update and staff is working to if the Council wants to include objectives and goals for historic preservation. The finalized plan, which is meant to provide general guidelines for future community development, could be approved by the end of 2016.
ԲɴǴǻ’s , a subdivision of 124-post World War II homes bounded by Dartmouth and Bates avenues and Marion and Franklin streets, is already on the National Register of Historic Places, Power said.
One Englewood historic structure, the Odd Fellows Hall at , is being restored now by a group who bought it 2014. The second floor of the 1924 structure, for many years the meeting places for the local chapter of the , has already been restored and rented to the nonprofit, and two 2,500-square-foot spaces on the ground floor are being readied for retail or restaurant tenants, co-owner Josh Greenberg said. . Greenberg estimated the partners will invest about $1 million to restore the building, including fixing up the neon “IOOF” sign that accents the building’s Broadway side.
Greenberg’s partners, couple Steve Howards and Deborah Andrews, brought in $180,000 in state tax credits to help restore the building, a specialty for Andrews, an architect. Howards said the process could have been simpler if the city had designated the surrounding area, which contains some of the city’s , as a historic district.
“With some simple action from the City Council they could make it much easier for building owners interested in the adaptive reuse of historic buildings,” Howards said.
said while he favors historic preservation but would not be interested in Englewood becoming a certified local government because it could affect property rights and be abused. He said he hopes home and business owners who want to pursue historic preservation will look to the city as a potential partner.
“I don’t think itap the city’s job to tell you what to do with a property if you bought it for a different purpose,” Gillit said. “The sad thing is most of ԲɴǴǻ’s history is already gone.”