Aliyya Swaby Photo
Opposition organizer Kerekes.
State officials scaled back plans for promoting historic preservation in Wooster Square after a small but vocal group of neighbors protested the proposal.
The area of Wooster Square just around the park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which helps recognize properties of historical significance and gets homeowners grants to preserve them.
The state Historic Preservation Office had been working with officials from the New Haven Preservation Trust to include the whole neighborhood on the National Register – funding the process through the Hurricane Sandy disaster relief program.
But a group of Wooster Square neighbors, mainly on Lyon and William Streets, challenged this proposal at a set of public meetings in May and late June. They argued that although the National Register itself cannot be used to restrict private owners from developing their property, the listing would make it easier for the city to adopt a more stringent municipal preservation ordinance in Wooster Square.
Such an ordinance would require approval from a commission before the city could allow changes to a historic property listed on the National Register.
Advocates of the National Register expansion say that ordinance is not in the cards for New Haven. But state officials saw the opposition and backed off, taking the grant money with them. Instead, they will focus on updating the existing part of the neighborhood that is already in the National Register.
Kristina Newman-Scott, of the State Historic Preservation Office, sent a letter June 30 to Elsie Chapman, from the Historic Wooster Square Association, explaining the decision.
Click here to read the letter.
“It has recently become clear that there is significant opposition to this project from property owners within the likely area of expansion. In light of this opposition, our office believes it is prudent to focus on updating the existing National Register district nomination in Wooster Square, without altering the current boundaries,” the letter reads.
Jeffrey Kerekes, who helped spread the word about the municipal ordinance throughout the neighborhood, said he stands by his earlier reasoning for opposing the plan.
“It sounds like maybe they heard the concerns of the community and amended their proposal,” he said.
Local preservationists said a restrictive municipal ordinance would be unlikely to pass, especially because the city would need additional resources to manage a stricter set of regulations.
“You would have to create this enormous, enormous city bureaucracy to be able to manage that,” said Pedro Soto, vice president of the New Haven Preservation Trust board. “It would never fly. It would never happen.”
He expressed disappointment that the proposal is off the table.
“It’s disappointing because I think the level of opposition was vocal but not particularly representative of the entire community,” he said.
Soto called Kerekes’ opposition statement a “highly inaccurate, inflammatory response to what expanding the [national] historic district would have meant.”
He said he would support any provisions that would prevent the city from using the municipal ordinance to restrict homeowners of historic properties. “It’s a law that’s not a good fit for the city … Everyone who was involved agrees that this law could never pass, nor would it be supported,” he said.
“If this law were amended, would the people who were against it be supportive?” he asked.
Kerekes has said that the municipal ordinance is the main part of the proposal he had opposed. He also expressed concern that disaster funds were being used to support an unrelated project.
John Herzan, who has been at the New Haven Preservation Trust for 13 years, said the funding would have been an unexpected boon for the neighborhood. He has been trying to expand the National Register in the neighborhood for the last decade, but couldn’t find the money. He had been hoping for a state grant that would require a local match. But this latest funding was going to finance the whole project.
That might not come around again, he said.
“In the future, it all depends on the state availability of funds, which are somewhat in jeopardy given the state’s fiscal situation,” he said. “I’m disappointed because, from a historian’s point of view, I would have liked to increase our knowledge of the surrounding area.”
He said he was shocked by the “level of discontent” in response to the proposal. “We really thought we were doing a service to the people who lived in the area.”
Herzan said he is excited that the properties within the existing National Register boundary “will be studied and better documented,” a positive outcome of the situation.
“My only concern is that this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I feel badly about that because I’m not sure their concern is really going to happen,” he said. “No one can predict the future.”
Becareful what you ask for.
Preserving history, or the 1 percent?
New historic districts seem less interested in saving a neighborhood's character than driving up property values
When Jacobs' neighborhood was protected in 1969, it was no tony enclave. In fact, the justification for the urban-renewal project was that Greenwich Village was allegedly a slum. But now that the Village is wealthy, suddenly there are three expansions of its protective boundaries in six years. The timing invites cynical conclusions, bluntly summed up by urbanist Alon Levy on his blog last year: "Let us remember what historic districts are, in practice: They are districts where wealthy people own property that they want to prop up the price of.Restricting development in pricey neighborhoods, the new thinking goes, not only cements a city's best sections as enclaves for the rich, it has wider anti-urban reverberations. It promotes suburbanization by pricing out the middle class.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/14/the_new_gated_communities/