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Preservation policy for a legacy business program.
Creating and implementing municipal preservation policy can be valuable for the success of a legacy business program. After all, many existing programs are run by municipal offices of historic preservation or preservation departments. Municipal preservation policy can accomplish more than just preserving and protecting buildings. It can help to define significant cultural and community elements, stabilize commercial corridors, and maintain the sense of place in our neighborhoods. By creating and implementing preservation policies, municipalities can help keep legacy businesses rooted in their communities, define the elements that matter most to the community for preservation efforts, and convey the message that the municipal government values its citizens' history and cultural heritage.
If you work in a municipal office of historic preservation, you already know the pivotal role your team will play in legacy business preservation policy. If you work elsewhere, reach out to your local preservation department as soon as you can. The office of historic preservation is the primary driver in defining and enacting municipal preservation policy. They are also the gateway to working with your State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) or with federal historic designations. That said, preservation policy is rarely enacted by a single department. As with other policy initiatives, partnering and collaborating with your planning department, economic development department, office of small business, and community development department is necessary. The planning department, especially, will be crucial to enacting any zoning or land-use policy that goes hand in hand with preservation policy.
Establishing preservation policy for a legacy business program often starts with community outreach and research to identify, survey, and map qualifying assets, including buildings and businesses, as well as culturally significant services or products. Stakeholder (business owner) interviews and community input will help define and refine preservation policy to ensure your legacy business program preserves what matters most. The office of historic preservation and the community development department are well-positioned to make this possible. They can also partner with municipal legal and policy staff to draft policy and work with the city council or board of supervisors to get it approved and adopted. Once adopted, the preservation policy can provide the framework for implementing additional tools like zoning or economic support.
By collaborating with municipal departments and involving the community, you can create a municipal preservation policy that protects not only commercial buildings but also the legacy businesses they house. Preservation policy, in conjunction with a legacy business program, can help legacy businesses address economic and development challenges and remain rooted in their communities, continuing their role in preserving the history and culture of their neighborhoods and defining their sense of place. The following sections outline some preservation policy initiatives that could benefit your legacy business program.
Developing Local Historic Districts
A local historic district is a municipally designated neighborhood or area in which contributing elements are protected through ordinances and policies designed to preserve its character, identity, or significance. These districts are initiated through a municipally led process that starts with the identification of an area culturally, historically, or architecturally significant to the city. The municipal office of historic preservation or preservation department usually initiates this process. It includes city staff surveying the area, documenting elements that contribute to its significance, collecting community input and feedback, and creating an eligibility document or proposal. The proposal is presented to the relevant governing body, such as the historic commission or city council, and sometimes the public for approval. Once approved, the historic district is ratified through a municipal ordinance that outlines the boundaries, protections, rules, incentives, and review processes.
Legacy business programs can be much more easily integrated with local historic districts than with state or federal districts. Municipal governments can mold historic district policies and ordinances to include the contributing elements they deem fit. This means that a local historic district could consist of both tangible elements, such as buildings or spaces, and intangible elements, such as the legacy businesses in those buildings, as contributors to the district. By doing this, incentives, zoning ordinances, protections, and review processes can be tailored to include legacy businesses and any other intangible elements, such as traditions, social practices, skills, or knowledge transfer that occur there. Because of their flexibility, local historic districts are much more likely to be driven by community input and responsive to true community wants and needs. Additionally, when local historic districts allow for adaptation and community input, they can be more amenable to change as their communities evolve over time. Unfortunately, many districts struggle with change when their focus is solely on preserving the historic character and significance of buildings rather than other significant elements of the community.
To integrate your legacy business program with existing or proposed local historic districts, your first stop is the municipal office of historic preservation and/or the city planning department. Meeting with these departments will help you understand the current ordinance and policy, the designation or amendment process for historic districts, and the steps required for integration with the legacy business program. City staff can also help you or show you how to start collecting community input that will support the inclusion of legacy businesses as contributing elements of a historic district. Furthermore, these partners are best positioned to advance initiatives through city approval processes.
Chinatown Special Historic District | Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu's Chinatown Special Historic District specifically cites cultural elements as contributing to its significance. It includes protections for culturally specific businesses and buildings.
Case in point.
Creating New Definitions for Significance
“Significance” is the term used in preservation policy to describe the value and importance of a place. Significant places, usually buildings, are contributing elements to a historic district, generally for historical or architectural reasons, or patterns of community settlement or development. Significance has traditionally been associated with the built environment, where buildings are deemed significant based on factors such as architectural integrity, design elements, or community character.
While these built environment elements are still essential, more municipal governments are realizing the importance of intangible elements, such as traditions, social and cultural practices, and even legacy businesses, as significant to a more inclusive historical narrative for their communities. Protecting and preserving these elements alongside the built environment creates historic districts with a greater sense of place, identity, character, and community continuity.
To make this possible, a redefinition of significance would be required in many municipalities. New concepts for significance would need to be added for these intangible elements; for your legacy business program, this would include defining why legacy businesses are significant. This would help define legacy businesses as cultural and historical repositories and community anchors, especially in BIPOC and immigrant communities. In this case, the business itself could be significant, regardless of its building's historic or architectural significance, making it a contributing element eligible for the protection and preservation incentives available through municipal preservation initiatives.
Creating new definitions of significance that include cultural elements, such as legacy businesses, will likely require amendments or additions to municipal preservation ordinances or policies. If you work in or with a municipal government, you know that change can be difficult and can require a shift in thinking and perspective. It is best to work with your office of historic preservation and other departments, such as community development and planning, to ensure they are aligned with the proposed changes and that you can define their purpose and benefit. If you can get buy-in, adding cultural significance to preservation policy will require adopting more inclusive, community-focused input and survey processes. It will likely require changes to the relevant documentation and design review process. It will also require close coordination with the governing body, such as the historic preservation commission or city council, to adopt and implement the changes. Fortunately, zoning and ordinance amendments occur regularly in most municipalities and require far less effort and scrutiny than creating new ordinances. Adopting new definitions of significance that include the intangible and cultural elements will guarantee that local historic districts project a richer, more inclusive community story, while providing legacy businesses that qualify with protections and incentives to help them remain part of that story.
Creating New Types of Preservation Districts
Rather than adapt existing historic districts to include intangible cultural elements, it may make more sense with some municipalities to create new preservation districts altogether. These districts could expand their focus beyond the built environment to include intangible elements such as traditions, foods, cultural events and festivals, culturally specific knowledge and skills, shared spaces, and legacy businesses. This would provide your municipality with a vehicle to preserve and protect the cultural heritage of a place, not just the physical spaces. These districts can create a more inclusive municipal preservation program, focusing on community and cultural continuity and on community-based history, especially in BIPOC, ethnic, and immigrant communities, where living history may not be as obvious or is less rooted in physical structures.
Alternative preservation districts could also offer more flexibility than historic districts, which are often, even at the local level, based on criteria set for the National Register of Historic Places. Additionally, many historic districts base their rules, design standards, and rehabilitation regulations on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, which emphasize the built environment over intangible characteristics. A district designed to include intangible cultural and social elements could be much more adaptive to community needs and prioritize preserving these elements rather than buildings, but may require supplementing the more common preservation standards.
The process for creating these districts will be similar to that of Historic Districts, but should rely more heavily on community input and definition. A few cities in the US have already started creating these types of districts. Here are some examples.
Houston's Heritage Districts
The City of Houston has amended its code of ordinances to include the designation of Heritage Districts. Contributing elements in heritage districts include intangible cultural heritage and social significance, alongside physical elements.
Case in point.
Historic Cultural/Heritage District
Denver’s La Alma Lincoln Park Historic Cultural District was created to preserve and protect cultural elements related to the Chicano movement in the 1960s-1980s. This includes nontraditional elements like recreation facilities, murals, and the scale of single-family homes in the neighborhood. The process behind the district also included community involvement to create tailored design guidelines that “appropriately reflect the history of the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood.”
Historic Commercial District
Historic Commercial Districts are relatively common in the US, but most focus on the same criteria as historic districts. The Castro Street Neighborhood Commercial District in San Francisco is one alternative example. While the district includes historic buildings and locations, it also focuses on preserving the scale and space for LGBTQ+ small business owners, along with cultural institutions and elements in the neighborhood.
Special (Create Your Own) Districts
New York City created a unique culturally centered “Special District” for Harlem’s 125th Street and surrounding areas. The focus of this district is on preserving African American music, culture, arts, and commercial institutions in the neighborhood. While the physical environment is part of the historic narrative, the district highlights the social and cultural history, including Black business owners and music clubs.
Reenvisioning Individual Designation Criteria
“Designation” is the process by which something has been evaluated and meets the significance criteria to be eligible for preservation status and benefits. In this case, it refers to local designation. So far, we have only discussed districts, but not all legacy businesses will be located within a designated preservation district. There are businesses throughout our cities that are cornerstones of our communities, but are not located in a historic building or district. Additionally, businesses may have moved, been less overtly significant, or had multiple owners. They may still be treasured social or cultural institutions, but not generally eligible for designation under municipal standards.
To move beyond these limitations, consider working with your municipal partners to develop new designation criteria for your local preservation policy. This could include adding cultural or community significance as a criterion. This could make intangible cultural heritage elements, such as food, music, skills, festivals, and art, eligible. It could also allow for a living heritage or culturally significant designation for a type of business in the community. This would enable preservation protections and benefits explicitly tied to the kind of business your legacy businesses conduct.
In my hometown of San Diego, the city’s designation criterion A includes designation or cultural or social significance, stating “exemplifies or reflects special elements of the City’s, a community’s, or a neighborhood’s historical, archaeological, cultural, social, economic, political, aesthetic, engineering, landscaping, or architectural development.” While this does open the door to alternative individual listings, I could not find a listing on our local registry explicitly designated for these reasons. This may be because these designations are not well defined or understood under current municipal policy.
Reenvisioning individual designation criteria requires not only changes in policy, but also changes in process, evaluation, design standards, and review. You will need to have a clear definition of why new criteria are required for legacy businesses and what benefit (and cost) it might bring. Be sure to base this on community input and get community backing to help build support. As with other preservation policies, start with your office of historic preservation to determine whether the additions are feasible, that they align with the goals of their office (and the city), and what it will take to make them happen.