Historic Wallingford is hosting a public meeting to discuss the development of a National Register of Historic Places residential historic district nomination and the use of historical census data.
The meeting will be held at 7 pm on Tuesday, October 12, 2021, via Zoom. Join the meeting by registering at this link or by going to the Historic Wallingford website.
The historic district effort builds on a 2019 feasibility study. It is led by a grassroots volunteer team guided by preservation consultants Northwest Vernacular. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the National Register process and what designation means for property owners and to present early findings of historical census research. An in-depth analysis of census data will be used to reveal a richer story of the ethnic roots and occupations of early Wallingford residents. A second public meeting on the nomination application is planned for later this year.
Learn more about the Feasibility Study completed in 2019 at the Historic Wallingford website. From the results of this study, the area containing the highest concentration of properties meeting criteria established by the National Park Service as contributing to a National Register Historic District was chosen to pursue a nomination. The area between N/NE 45thSt and N/NE 50th St and between Interlake Ave N. and 5th Ave NE is the area under consideration and has been designated Wallingford Historic District—North.
Interesting stories of people who lived in Wallingford are being uncovered through this nomination research. This is a community many people cherish, with a significant attachment to the heritage homes found here.
Your support and involvement is crucial to this effort and to the potential effort for additional designations in Wallingford. Join Historic Wallingford and NW Vernacular Tuesday, October 12th at 7pm to learn more. Historic Wallingford is proud to have 4Culture as a sponsor.
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What are the implications of such a historic district?
The first comment on that article offers a true statement that the federal historic designation doesn’t, in and of itself, change anything about what you can do with your property. It would unlock certain federal incentives for preservation work that might change some redevelopment vs. renovation decisions on the margins, but that’s about it as far as direct impacts go.
That said, this designation can lead to some protections at a state and local level.
For example, part of the required process for making zoning changes is to write an Environmental Impact Statement that researches and documents any expected changes to various aspects of the natural and built environment. Historic districts are one of the things that needs to be studied in an EIS. The people in Ravenna created a historic district in their neighborhood at the same time as the EIS process was going on for the MHA rezones that passed a couple years ago. Since the historic district came into existence toward the end of this process, the city decided to carve this new historic district out of the rezone area so as not to jeopardize the timeline for the rest of the citywide rezone.
The result is that low-density single-family (recently renamed “neighborhood residential”) zoning persists as little as one block away from our new Roosevelt light rail station.
Going back to Wallingford specifically, the existing zoning regulations would remain in effect. Nothing would stop a developer from tearing down a century-old bungalow and replacing it with a giant box house (or townhomes in zones where those are legal).
Future efforts to rezone the city for greater density would require an extra step in the EIS process, forcing the city to look at the specific impacts to the new Wallingford historic district and call that out separately from the citywide impacts. Whether that would actually make a difference in the end is impossible to say, but it does add another step to the process and each additional step has some chance of derailing the whole thing. Whether that’s a desirable thing or not is left as an exercise for the reader.
“Historic districts are one of the things that needs to be studied in an EIS. The people in Ravenna created a historic district in their neighborhood at the same time as the EIS process was going on for the MHA rezones that passed a couple years ago. Since the historic district came into existence toward the end of this process, the city decided to carve this new historic district out of the rezone area so as not to jeopardize the timeline for the rest of the citywide rezone.”
Well that’s evil.