The city-parish Historic Preservation Commission will vote next month on a revised ordinance that will make it easier to renovate and redevelop in the city’s two historic districts. If approved, the changes will go before the Planning Commission and the Metro Council, which will also have to sign off on the revisions.
The revised historic preservation ordinance will make it easier for property owners to obtain approval from the commission—technically known as certificates of appropriateness—to make changes to buildings and homes in Spanish Town and Drehr Place.
Under the current ordinance, property owners need a certificate of appropriateness if they are planning any changes to the exterior of their property—even if it is in the back yard and not visible from the street. The revised ordinance only requires approval for changes that are visible from a public right of way.
The revised ordinance also eliminates the 10-day waiting period between the time a certificate of appropriateness is awarded and goes into effect.
“This really simplifies and streamlines the whole process of dealing with properties in historic districts,” says Planning Director Frank Duke, whose staff drafted the revised ordinance as well as other changes to the city’s zoning code. “We’ve addressed some inconsistencies in the law and made some improvements.”
Revisions to the historic preservation ordinance are among several changes to the city-parish zoning code the Planning Commission staff made in 2015. Though the process of rewriting the code has taken longer than Duke had hoped, he says significant progress has been made.
Among the other changes: revisions to the Government Street overlay district, revisions to the parking requirements and a rewrite of the law dealing with nonconformities.
In 2016, the Planning Commission staff will begin working on changes to the Jefferson Highway overlay district, which has restrictive and outdated rules that stymie developers, and to the city’s signage ordinance.
“I can’t control how signs look,” Duke says. “But I can control their placement, their size and their number.”
—Stephanie Riegel
