City proposes Downtown National Historic District

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city is proposing to create a Downtown National Historic District, a move designed to let owners of historic properties qualify for tax credits to help with building restorations.

On Wednesday, city officials held two public open houses to acquaint property owners and residents with the proposal. Jennifer Pratt, the city's director of community development, said the city hopes that the public outreach will help determine if the downtown property owners are interested.

Anne Russett, a planner in the city's Department of Community Development and Planning, said the creation of a downtown historic district will not add any restrictions to property owners who decide to renovate their properties. However, a historic district may make them eligible for financial incentives via historic tax credits to help pay for renovation work, she said.

Pratt said the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have provided the city with federal disaster funds to identify ways the city can preserve its history.

With those funds, the city hired consultant Summit Envirosolutions Inc., which has conducted a downtown survey and identified the boundaries of the proposed downtown historic district.

The boundaries generally are from First Avenue East to Fourth Avenue SE and Second Street SE to Fifth Street SE. They also include the block between Second and Third streets SE and Fourth and Fifth avenues SE.

A total of 59 buildings in the proposed district have been identified as being historic and contributing to the designation of the historic district. Another seven properties potentially may be contributing.

Among the properties are several already on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Paramount Theatre; the Roosevelt Hotel; the Security Bank Building, 119 Second Ave. SE/203 Second St. SE; the Witwer Building, 303-305 Second Ave. SE; the former public library that is now part of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art; the Lattner Auditorium Building, 213-217 Fourth Ave. SE; the Iowa Building, 221 Fourth Ave. SE; and the Sokol Gymnasium, 417 Third St. SE.

Mark Stoffer Hunter, a historian of Cedar Rapids, said Wednesday that it is a good idea for the city to pursue the creation of a Downtown National Historic District.

'Downtown property owners shouldn't be frightened of this,” said Stoffer Hunter, a member of the city's Historic Preservation Commission. 'It won't prevent property owners from doing what they want to do with their buildings. But if they choose to preserve or restore older historic buildings, they may be eligible for national and state historic tax credits.”

Stoffer Hunter said the proposed district defines the long-standing core area of the city's downtown business district, which he said features the highest historically-intact concentration of buildings in the downtown. Many early city buildings that had been on the periphery of the proposed district have been torn down over time and replaced with newer buildings, he said.

Jon Dusek, president and chief executive officer of Armstrong Development Corp., said Wednesday that the concept of the downtown historic district 'may have some merit.” But he said he wants to learn more about what regulations might come with such a district.

Doug Neumann, executive vice president of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, had headed up the Downtown District before it became part of the Alliance. He said a downtown historic district has not been on the priority list of downtown property owners; for now, there is a lot of 'education and understanding” that needs to take place, he said.

'I do not sense significant opposition to it, but I do think a lot of people have questions right now,” Neumann said. 'So it's really a discovery period, and I don't know if it will be championed or if it will be opposed.”

Pratt said the proposed Downtown National Historic District would operate in similar fashion to the existing Bohemian Commercial National Historic District, which was in place in New Bohemia at the time of the 2008 flood and was expanded to Czech Village in the wake of the flood.

'It's been extremely popular to have in place because, after the flood, property owners were eligible for those historic tax credits for a lot of the renovation that went on,” she said.

Recently, a new district, the Third Avenue SW Commercial National Historic District, has been designated and is in place in Kingston Village across from downtown, and renovation work there is now picking up pace as a result, Pratt said.

Pratt said the creation of the downtown historic district is in an early stage.

If there is support, the city will send a formal request to the State Historic Preservation Office, which reviews the request and sends it on to the office's Nomination Review Committee. From there, it goes to the National Park Service. The entire process could take about a year, Russett said.