Rosedale resurvey gives residents options on how to best protect the neighborhood

With concerns of redevelopment of properties in Rosedale that don’t fit the flow of the neighborhood and developers erasing the history of the neighborhood, Caroline Swope, a historic preservation specialist who recently conducted a resurvey of the neighborhood, said it’s up to residents to decide how they want to proceed in providing the neighborhood with additional protection.

The Homewood Historic Preservation Commission hosted a meeting to present residents of Rosedale with the results of that resurvey at Lee Community Center on Aug. 4. 

Eddie Griffin, member of the Commission, said the purpose of the resurvey was to inform residents about how Rosedale has evolved over the last 18 years, which is when the last resurvey was conducted. 

“We really want to be a resource to Homewood’s government, residents, preservation and redevelopment of Rosedale in the future,” Griffin said. “We feel this way about all of the neighborhoods in Homewood and we really don’t have any other reason to exist other than to support the preservation of Homewood.” 

Rosedale is already on the National Register of Historic Places, Swope said, which is a list of buildings that have met certain standards to be considered historic. 

“It [National Register of Historic Places] was put in place specifically to keep the federal government from spending taxpayers funds to essentially obliterate long standing historic neighborhoods,” Swope said. “As a private property owner, you can have a house on the National Register or in a district, there’s no paperwork for you… It doesn’t do anything but it does ensure that for any federal projects like interstates, sidewalk construction or cellphone towers, it has to go through an extra review process to make sure they are not damaging something historically important. It doesn’t prevent them from doing it but it can slow the process and they have to do mitigation.”

The neighborhood is already classified as a Neighborhood Preservation District, which heavily protects the neighborhood from rezoning properties from its current residential designation. 

However, the neighborhood is still vulnerable to private developers that currently own property that could disrupt the neighborhood feel of Rosedale, Swope said.

Swope said a zoning overlay is a viable option for preserving the neighborhood. 

A zoning overlay would provide additional standards for the entire district that developers would have to adhere to in order to preserve the neighborhood’s residential feel and its history. 

She said this would require residents to come together and delegate with city officials to provide an additional level of protection. 

To be considered historic, a building has to be at least 50 years old and have integrity, meaning the building has enough historic parts to be considered historic, Swope said.

Buildings that are considered historic are called contributing properties while others that aren’t considered historic are called non-contributing properties. 

The original survey concluded that Rosedale had 81% contributing properties and 19% non-contributing properties, she said. 

The current survey identifies 64% of properties to be contributing and 36% non-contributing, due to significant changes to the properties which changed the standing of some of the properties. 

Griffith later told The Homewood Star that in order for there to be protection from local development, the city would have to declare Rosedale a local historic district, which requires not only several steps on the part of the city, but the approval of 60% of property owners in Rosedale. Previous efforts to bring that to fruition have not garnered enough support from those owners, he said.

The resurvey may help in future development of vacant or abandoned properties, but is not intended to be used to demolish existing properties that are being used, Griffith said. To his knowledge, only one building in the district, located at 2761-63 BM Montgomery Street, has been rezoned from residential zoning. That property was rezoned from residential to mixed-use development, he said.

Finishing touches are being made on the resurvey, with only the historical context — a narrative describing the historical background of the district — left to be completed, and that should be done by the end of August, Griffith said.

Homewood City Council President Alex Wyatt said while there would not be a reason to not discuss making Rosedale a locally-protected historic district, there are no current plans to do so. There are also no plans to create a zoning overlay district, though to do so would require a “fairly good amount of study” in order to determine if that is what is best for the area and if it achieves the goals desired by property owners, Wyatt said.

Homewood Star Editor Neal Embry contributed to this report.