Historic Preservation Commission Agenda and Packet 2011 12 19

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citiye Om Louisville t xmano • fNcE 1 SM 749 Alain Stree Louisville Historic Preservation Commission Loa isvilic CO k0027 70 3.335.4592 wily.'rnei,ruieco.p0v To: Mayor Sisk and Members of City Council From: The Historic Preservation Commission Re: Proposed Code Amendment to LMC 15.36.200 Date: September 19, 2011 For more than a year the HPC has carefully studied and considered changes to the Louisville Municipal Code Section 15.36 which regulates demolition of historic structures, in order to provide more clarity to the code, and predictability to applicants. At our meeting of September 19, 2011, we unanimously endorsed the attached recommendations which we advise Council to consider and approve. Included in our recommendations is a provision that demolition applications should run with the applicant rather than the property during the one year period prior to application expiration. The purpose of this communication is to provide City Council our rationale behind this recommendation. We acknowledge that structure designation and preservation activities are voluntary by the applicant. As a voluntary action, these decisions can only be made by the individual applicant and not by others. Therefore, we believe that if the application were to run with the applicant rather than the property it would: • Encourage personal involvement • Discourage potential of speculation, trading and selling of city permits • Foster our goals of outreach/education of historic preservation topics to applicants • Affirm the city's policy that preservation and designation is voluntary, made by the applicant Addressing Council's concern that when heirs suffer an unfortunate loss, we have amended the suggested language to include the applicant "and their heirs" so they would not need to reapply in such an event. Thank you for considering these points as well as our overall recommendations. H storic Preservation Commiss on Peter Stewart, Chairman