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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Ind. Gov't. - More on: "Historic districts fading away?"

Sunday's ILB entry quoted a story in the NWI Times. From the story: "It's a debate raging across the region as development and homeowner concerns force battles over the cost or benefit of saving properties perceived by some to be historic." The story pointed to residents' complaints that "the district prevented them from replacing doors or windows within their budgets."

Today the NY Times' Monica Davey has a story, dateline Chicago, headed "Challenge to Landmark Law Worries Preservationists." It begins:

Carol Mrowka considers her East Village neighborhood here attractive, comfortable — and ordinary. So when the city deemed the area an official landmark, Ms. Mrowka found it absurd and went to court.

“Sure, it’s a nice neighborhood,” said Ms. Mrowka, a real estate agent who moved 12 years ago to the neighborhood, north and west of the Loop, with its cottages and small, flat buildings that were home to immigrants in the late 1800s. “The basic style of the buildings is pretty, but this is not a landmark.”

Now her case has been appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, raising alarm among preservationists about the future of scores of such landmark districts and buildings in a city that adores its architectural legacy.

“The fact is, Chicago could not exist without its landmark ordinance,” said Jonathan Fine, the executive director of Preservation Chicago, a nonprofit group. “It’s the line that holds us back from the Neanderthals.”

A state appellate court sided with Ms. Mrowka and Al Hanna, a resident of Lincoln Park, another neighborhood where a section has landmark status, finding that Chicago’s four-decades-old ordinance for designating landmarks used “vague, ambiguous and overly broad” terms to sort out what buildings and neighborhoods should be protected from change or demolition.

The City of Chicago appealed that decision this month, and both sides are waiting to hear if the Illinois Supreme Court will take the case.

There is much more to this interesting story, such as claims that "the landmark designation was being used to 'racially cleanse a high income area.'”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 24, 2009 08:42 AM
Posted to Indiana Government