History in the making

Homewood’s Historic Preservation Commission has a small operating budget, relying on volunteer board members and $5,000 in funding from the city for its preservation and education work.

With its new certified local government status, however, the HPC can seek opportunities to more than double its resources, and therefore its impact.

“We have significant historic main streets in our community, we have historic homes, and we should absolutely be part of this program,” said former HPC Chair Brittany Foley, who has been leading the effort to achieve this status.

The certified local government program is operated by the National Park Service. Cities must meet certain criteria to become a CLG, which opens the door to federal grant opportunities.

Qualifying cities must establish a historic preservation commission, enforce state and local legislation for historic property preservation, maintain a survey and inventory system for local historic resources and encourage public participation in preservation efforts.

The program does not require Homewood to enact any new ordinances related to preservation or require additional funding outside of the HPC’s regular budget.

“It is not pulling from local city tax base. These are federal funds,” Foley said.

Homewood’s HPC has been working on achieving this status for about a year, Foley said. On Feb. 25, Homewood City Council unanimously approved the request to seek CLG status and apply for grants.

After that approval, Foley said, HPC members began an attempt to create a qualifying grant proposal by the 2019 deadline, March 29. With such a tight span of time between the council’s vote and the deadline, Foley said there’s a strong possibility that the HPC will have to wait until the 2020 grant cycle in order to talk with stakeholders in Homewood and fully develop a project budget.

“We’re kind of running really close, because in order to prepare a good grant, you need to have a time to address the community,” she said. “… At this point it would be pretty hard, I guess. Not impossible, but it does make it more challenging.”

The Alabama Historical Commission has about $83,000 in federal grant funds to dispense each year, and Homewood joins roughly 30 other CLGs in the state, including Birmingham, Auburn, Decatur, Demopolis, Dothan, Eufala and Mobile. 

“The biggest cities in our state … are using this, and we just felt like we did not want the city of Homewood and our residents to miss out on having access to these funds,” Foley said.

Most grants are fairly modest, Foley said, topping out around $10,000. The grants also require a 40 percent local match of either funds or donated professional hours from the local historic commission.

CLG grants can be used for commission member training, structural assessments, urban surveys, historic building registration, rehabilitation work, design guidelines and public awareness or education.

“Really, it should be more community-based projects for these grants,” she said.

She said the HPC already has its first grant proposal in mind, whether it’s submitted in 2019 or 2020. The HPC wants to work with some of Rosedale’s historic churches on needed building maintenance, and the grant could help with plans, drawings or other maintenance work.

“That’s a significant structure to the community, and usually churches are the last to get addressed on deferred maintenance,” Foley said, adding that older churches, especially if they have small congregations, may not have the budget for projects that they need.

HPC member Will Womack, who joined the commission last summer, said they had already talked with Union Missionary Baptist Church, at 1731 26th Ave. S., in February about some of their needs. Foley said the HPC planned to reach out to other historic church leaders after the city council’s approval.

Foley said the HPC has also discussed other grant projects, such as historic main street or neighborhood surveys to add areas to the National Register of Historic Places. Three historic Homewood neighborhoods — two in Rosedale and one in Hollywood — are already on the register.

Being on the register opens up tax credit opportunities for owners of certain historic buildings, based on the building’s use and preservation or renovation projects.

The HPC would also like to create a database of Homewood’s historic buildings, which could be a grant project in itself or could be built from those neighborhood surveys.

“We’ve got a lot of thoughts and ideas, and we’re just open also to hearing from the community about what they want,” Foley said.

CLG grants are intended to be for community-based preservation projects, Foley said. However, being a certified local government gives Homewood better standing to apply for other federal preservation grant opportunities, she said, and some of those could fund more extensive projects.

Separate from the CLG program, Womack said the HPC also is beginning a quarterly series of historic preservation forums at the Homewood Public Library for owners of historic homes and others interested in preservation. The first meeting, held March 19, focused on tax incentives and historic easement programs for homeowners.

Womack said upcoming forum topics could include maintenance of older homes or other issues residents want to hear about.

“We’re just trying to make tools available to the community for historic preservation,” he said.

As a history professor at UAB, Womack said it is important to him to preserve the historic nature of many parts of Homewood, and participating in the CLG program is an important step to expand the HPC’s abilities. When he lived in Nashville, Womack said there were times when the city and its developers dropped the ball, in his opinion, and historic buildings were lost.

“There’s stuff that needs to be done by the community to keep that sort of thing from happening,” he said.

Foley said she saw the CLG program’s benefits while living in New Orleans and, through her work as an architect, she has seen companies use federal tax credits to revitalize downtown Birmingham’s historic buildings. 

“I’ve kind of seen how transformative that can be in our downtown area, so I’m a really big believer in incentives,” Foley said.

Homewood, she said, is deserving of that same attention.

“It’s just unlike any other community I’ve lived in,” she said. “… You can’t replicate what we have here, and it’s really special.”