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well good morning everybody um i would just like to welcome you to our preserve minnesota 2020 continuing webinar series uh just so you all know um we are recording this webinar and we will have it available um soon on our website as soon as we can after the presentation um we would hope that you put your questions in the q a box as they come in and i'm going to turn it over to sarah from our office for presentations great excuse me thank you john morning everyone on behalf of the state historic preservation office it's my pleasure to welcome you to the 40th annual preserve minnesota conference and our fourth of six virtual conference sessions i hope everyone is safe and well i am sarah beimers the environmental review program manager with the state historic preservation office and i'm speaking to you from my home in northfield minnesota the homeland of the dakota people i invite you all to let us know where you're participating from i welcome you to acknowledge tribal communities as minnesota is also within the traditional homeland of the anishinaabe you can do this by typing into the chat feature click on the icon that looks like a circle with a dimple at the bottom of the screen and then enter your comment for at least 13 000 years of american indian history in minnesota other native nations with ancestral connections here include the iowa ho chunk cheyenne cree lakota and assiniboine we'd also love to hear if this is your first time joining a preserve minnesota conference so feel free to type into the chat feature that you are a first-time attendee if you were here with us in saint cloud last year you may have filled out an online survey regarding the updating of minnesota's statewide preservation plan or perhaps voted for a preservation or both for this year's conference we're going to conclude a year of engagement and forward the draft plan to the national park service for final approval or we were going to however because of the pandemic our timeline has been modified as you might have guessed and we have received a year-long extension to complete this plan there are still ways to engage in this process and the draft plan will be out for public comment in mid 2021 you can sign up for shippo's gov delivery email messaging by visiting our webpage to subscribe we've all been adjusting to the global pandemic and our virtual conference reflects those adjustments while the shipboard team values the networking opportunities we have during our in-person events we hope that our online series will allow for greater access and participation for the session schedule during these three weeks thank you for being a part of this virtual conference and for joining us from your home or wherever you are tuning in computer screens with virtual presentations are no substitute for meeting face to face so we appreciate you taking the time to join us with that i want to welcome our speakers for this morning's session titled untangling preservation planning from context statements to conditions assessments presented by my colleague jenny way chippewa national register architectural historian and tamara halverson lut historian and preservation consultant with new history so i'm turning it over to you two now thank you thanks sarah thank you there we go yep you should have it now i do thank you very much we can see the whole pdf great thank you welcome to untangling preservation planning from contact statements to conditions assessments my name is tamara helgerson-lut and i am a consultant with new history a building reuse firm based in minneapolis i'm trained as a historian and an architectural historian and at new history i specialize in our complicated state and federal compliance projects what that's what this means is that i both prepare and regularly use the preservation planning documents that we'll be discussing today i am jenny way i'm the national registered architectural historian for the state historic preservation office as sarah said my role is primarily focused on the eligibility of properties through all of shippo programs and that includes the review of preservation planning documents completed both as part of shippo's programs and also through the minnesota historical society cultural historical and cultural with legacy grants i in addition to that i use these documents in my everyday work to assess the significance and eligibility of properties in addition to our roles at new history in the state historic preservation office jenny and i co-teach a course on historic preservation at the university of minnesota in that course we have found that our students benefit from our different perspectives because while we're partners in advancing historic preservation projects we have very different responsibilities throughout the course of any preservation planning project to that end today we'll be discussing a variety of preservation planning tools in addition to describing what the each tool is and how it functions we'll discuss how we use it in our everyday work we recognize that we are presenting a powerpoint about written documents [Laughter] we may not be presenting the most thrilling material that you'll cover in in this year's conference but what we have found through the course of our jobs is that a lot of people are really confused about what preservation planning documents do how they're used when they should be undertaken and how long they're valuable so we feel that these are incredibly important documents to talk about however we also recognize that it's important to see how they make actual projects viable and how they result in successful rehabilitation projects to that end we'll end on case studies that show how various preservation planning documents were essential to the reactivation of historic buildings in space so we're going to look at the most common types of documents today we're going to try to stay out of the weeds so we're going to try to stay at a 30 000 foot level we do welcome any questions that you might have as john said in that q and a function we really feel like that's going to be where the rubber meets the road and where we can best help you to understand what's happening in your situations or general questions um please remember that while we are going to discuss above ground structures and landscapes today preservation is architect is interdisciplinary and archaeology is just as important as standing structures especially when you do your inventory and evaluation work we encourage you to do that concurrently so that you understand all of the resources located within any given parcel and try not to to think about the standing structures and the above ground resources differently than your archaeological resources preservation planning goals can range drastically in scope and focus which is why some of these documents are confusing when to use them and why you need them um but keep in mind that one of the key points is that formal historic preservation which we're talking about today hinges on the eligibility of a property generally when you work with the shippo it hinges on the national register eligibility but can also hinge on local designation eligibility these documents the planning documents in the beginning of the processes we're going to discuss are about determining eligibility um making sure that the property has significance and can support an integrity argument and then the latter half of the document latter half of the documents we're going to discuss basically talks about how to continue to keep that eligibility during the treatment process um so keep in mind that the types of information that you're trying to gather help to support that eligibility conclusion that's the difference between a planning document and a history so what do we mean when we say preservation planning if you work for a city you're familiar with a preservation plan and a preservation plan is usually part of a city's comprehensive plan and what it does is it identifies the community's preservation goals it includes community engagement in order to identify those goals it strengthens political support for preservation policy and it plans for future preservation work at its heart it often also encourages economic development through the retention and rehabilitation of historic resources while the city develops a preservation plan as part of its comprehensive plan preservation planning documents like we're talking about today they're part of a greater process of implementing those preservation goals they follow a very specific organized sequence of preservation activities specifically identification evaluation registration and the treatment of historic properties there are a lot of people that engage in preservation planning from the macro level of the statewide preservation plan which is put together by the state historic preservation office to the micro level of individual property owners that are just trying to get some work done on their building public entities like the ones you see here engage typically because federal and state law requires it they can produce foundational documents but often when it comes to these documents and the use of these documents the roles and authority are limited by the regulations private and non-profit entities engage as stewards of historic properties and as advocates for preservation or academically simply to further the understanding of a particular subject area all of which are very important and then private owners engage most often to take advantage of the financial incentives related to historic preservation this is the least formal however they have the most control over what can actually happen to a building so these roles are often clearly defined by the program that um a person is activated in and we engage both in the all of these entities get engaged often both in the writing and in the use depending on what the project is and how they're approaching it preservation planning and the tools that we'll be discussing today serve a number of functions they're all equally important they broaden our understanding of history both at the local and state level they identify potential historic resources for protection investment and redevelopment and they cleared a way for efficient and effective project planning very often in the course of my role as a consultant i'll get a phone call from someone who's interested in buying a historic building or has realized that they've already bought a historic building and they want to understand what their opportunities and constraints are in the reactivation of that building if preservation planning documents like those we're going to be discussing today have been commissioned and undertaken and they're available for me to use in answering those questions i am able to help a potential degree development project clear efficient a clear and efficient path to reuse because i understand whether or not a building is historic whether or not it's eligible for financial incentives like jenny described whether or not it's locally designated and needs to go through a review process at the local level and whether or not there are specific character and character elements and materials that need to be preserved in the reactivation of a building knowing all of that in advance of starting a project creates a far more efficient timeline to construction this is true for the state historic preservation office as well when we do our regulatory reviews having all of that information in place can help create a solid foundation for moving forward and reduces the amount of questions that we tend to ask well that we tend to ask you [Laughter] preservation and planning is important because once historic properties have been demolished or destroyed they cannot be replaced as jenny noted it takes preservation planning takes place at a number of scales from the individual property owner to all the way up to the state there are even federal preservation planning programs it can support other planning goals such as sustainability walkable cities and economic development and it should be integrated into a larger planning process preservation planning should always include public participation the best way to get support for your preservation policies and to have clear understanding of what preservation means and what designation does and doesn't mean for an individual property is by engaging the public as jenny is going to note later on in the presentation it's also also the very best way to find out what stories and histories are important in your community to make sure that all students are represented as we've hit upon before and we'll hit upon throughout the course of this presentation there's a logical and systematic order to the preservation planning process so preservation planning was formalized by the national park service through the secretary of the interior standards and guidelines for archaeology and historic preservation in 1983. the process was we lost it i know sorry i'll keep talking the process was divided into four basic steps identification evaluation registration registration and treatment and generally the documents are categorized under a single step but as we know preservation projects tend to be complicated and they're rarely they really are undertaken um in quite a clean as manner a clean a manner as the regs had initially intended um what's important to remember is that the documents build on each other and they work with each other to create efficiencies however each project and need is different um for instance if you're told you need a historic structure report and you don't know why it's important to ask those questions we work with consultants all over the country um and they use these words and these terms identification evaluation and the names of the documents a little bit differently than then maybe we do in minnesota or maybe we do from project to project so if you have a question about why you need a specific document or what that specific document is supposed to um to convey do ask it no matter what your area of expertise or how often you've worked in these projects sometimes you don't need a historic structure support sometimes you just need a conditions assessment um talking about these things and making sure that everybody understands exactly what the goal of the preservation document is uh will help um efficiencies in the project and also just help better communication um at a very pragmatic level it will save resources and financial so talk about what you need figure out why you need it and if you don't know ask certainly if you're working with shippo you're welcome to call us sometimes it's these documents are required because of grant reasons sometimes they're required um you know because of mitigation sometimes they're required for all sorts of reasons um and sometimes it's just what somebody thought of and maybe you don't actually need it not that we ever make that mistake so the first step is identification so the identification of properties basically this information provides the research necessary to support eligibility we need to know why a property is significant in order for it to be eligible and these documents provide that foundational information the most common types are listed the context and theme studies are roughly the same thing a theme in in the case of preservation is basically a concept in history or prehistory that that affects american american history so it can be anything from an architectural style to an immigration system to landscape architecture um as i said these are broad foundational documents and are important for building so we're going to go over context first so contacts or documents that explore themes within the geographic or temporal limit and under specific circumstances so these documents tie the history of a place and themes to specific geographic locations they're most often undertaken by municipalities and written by consultants and they're not always reviewed by shippo's very often these are commissioned by local governments um and they are for local government use um and then we try to get copies of them so that we can you know be informed of their of their content and the information um this is as tam ra mentioned earlier the greatest opportunity to create diversity and to engage with underrepresented communities to share their stories so this is an opportunity for any entity to reach out to um any community and their interest and ask them about about their history about their impact on the built environment or the um or the cultural landscape and have an opportunity to really create a base foundational document about something other than the histories that we tend to to focus on these documents will often list previously identified resources but they don't locate new resources survey is not part of this document scopes can range from single focus resources like fire towers of minnesota in 1910 to 1970. or they can be more complicated like the one we see here which is the saint paul african-american historic and cultural context 1837 to 1975. both of those examples have multiple themes within the context document clearly the african-american context is much more robust than fire tower simply because there's much more that goes into understanding how that particular group of people influenced and were influenced by policy and regulation in the built environment in the field i used to start contexts and beam studies to evaluate and situate properties incentives that accompany those designations um as jimmy said where contacts are exceptionally important in my line of work is that they provide insight into the things that i can't see in the built environment so they tell me stories that help me identify whether or not a building that i'm looking at can represent or does represent the history that we have covered in the context that's harder to see than say architectural style i can't see that when i'm walking up to a building on the street so a context gives me the framework of which to make those evaluations that are more about social history than they are about architectural history and materials um when we talk about project efficiency if i don't have a historic context for the subject that i'm trying to evaluate the story that i'm trying to tell the argument trying to make i have to develop one through the course of any nomination or evaluation that adds more time to any project so when contexts are available they do create project efficiency um another type of context that we have at the state historic preservation office and are usually undertaken by state historic preservation offices is a multiple property documentation form i only mention this because while they are robust contextual documents they also have registration requirements so this is these are requirements that clearly identify under um the subject of the of the multiple property documentation form on the situation under which these properties are eligible that was a bit of a tongue twister for instance this mpdf is about banks in minnesota it does not locate all of the banks in minnesota however it has a context about bank development and about architectural styles of banks and then goes on to describe when a bank is eligible these are used for ubiquitous properties any town may have multiple banks how do you do the comparative analysis to determine which which bank in your community is in fact eligible for listing and is the best example of a bank um an mpdf tells you things like banks that don't survive the depression are generally not considered eligible because they were not [Music] they were not good business investments these documents go through the national register listing process so they're reviewed by our office the state review board and go on to the national park service for final acceptance these documents need to be used if you have a property that falls under one of them the state historic preservation office has a number of these and you will hear from our office and from consultants oh that's covered in an mpdf that means that tamra doesn't have to write the context the context is there for them and not only that you have specific registration requirements that need to be addressed in your evaluation documentation um the next thing that we're going to look at so once you have your context once you sort of know what you're going out to look for your context has given you these big swaths of of area that may or may not be may or may not be a place that you can go look for any certain kind of building or certain type of of uh of property we do a recon survey so a recon surveys are sometimes referred to as a windshield survey they identify properties that are likely associated with historic context and they make recommendations on the need for an intensive survey they do not evaluate properties individually or is contributing and non-contributing elements a recon survey does not require building specific research and they are typically used to get a general understanding of an area the way to think about a recon survey is if a context has told you that mid-century modern properties are likely found at the edge of your residential [Music] your residential development a windshield survey a recon survey is when you go out and you look and you say oh yes this this is in fact mid-century um these are mid-century buildings these are mid-century you know minimal traditional houses or nope they're still farmland so they might have been platted um and intended to be built but they weren't actually nothing was actually constructed here or yes these do these are residential houses but they're clearly from 1980 so we probably don't need to dive deeper into their significance under under a mid-century context they they give us a little bit of a more specific boundary but again they don't do eligibility discussion they basically give you an opportunity to say we thought something might be here there is something actually here and we would like to look into it a little bit farther i often think of recon surveys as oh that's interesting i want to know more about that and in the field when where recon surveys are beneficial to me is that again if somebody calls me about a property and it's been evaluated through a recon survey i know whether someone has said oh there's something interesting there we should dig into it and that allows me to give advice on next steps uh we i should note that recon surveys are typically undertaken by federal agencies and local local municipalities and they are sometimes even funded through legacy grants um so evaluation is that next step um this is when a property is the significance and the integrity according to the national register criteria or the local designation criteria are analyzed evaluation documents tell us if the subject property is eligible for listing and the the level of these eligibility sorry when the state historic preservation office determines that these properties are eligible it's recorded in our statewide inventory and therefore becomes a trigger for various other programs intensive surveys are the the largest um evaluation document that we tend to see these are designed to identify precisely and completely all historic resources in an area they involve detailed background research and a thorough inspection and documentation of the property in the field they include building descriptions construction history fully developed context and analysis of eligibility under applicable criteria they can include history they can be done on historic districts which you see on the right or individual properties which we see on the left um they are most efficiently completed if uh contextual work and recon surveys have been done before the intensive survey um so that the consultants or the agency representatives can go out and really focus on what they know they need to focus on and not spend a whole lot of time you know making sure that the thing next door is related these are typically undertaken by federal and state agencies or local governments and are completed by consultants as jd noted you see an individual property form on the left it is not uncommon for these evaluations within intensive level surveys to be anywhere between i would say 8 and 15 pages of evaluation on a given property so as when we talk about utility of something like an intensive level survey it gives you a lot of information about a property in question it also tells you whether or not recommendations have been made for local and or national designation so if you are on an hpc or city staff person being able to see the recommendations made on an intensive level survey give you a lot of information for your internal planning and evaluation for local designation and then if you are an advocacy organization or a property owner or a potential property owner these intensive survey forms give you a lot of background in history about the property that you own or are advocating for a property evaluation is a minnesota specific document and they are most of a nomination except they're not on the federal form so these are basically intensive surveys for individual properties this also provides the context and analysis of significance and integrity typically in relation or always in relation to the national register criteria they provide the full building descriptions and make a recommendation for eligibility if the shippo concurs with the recommendation the property is considered eligible for listing we typically see these through the legacy grant program so non-profit or public entities are typically the ones that come in and ask for a property to be evaluated and they're cons completed by consultants they can be done by an individual our office is happy to help the national register staff is happy to help individual property owners who are interested in evaluating their property this is a good first step because it doesn't require all of the sort of the fussy technical stuff that the national register nominations do i mean the national register program is a federal program in a federal form and comes with those complications local designation studies are used by municipalities and heritage preservation commissions to evaluate local resources against local designation criteria so if you're a certified local government for example you have an ordinance that includes preservation registration criteria against which either your city staff or often a consultant would evaluate a given property or potential district against to determine whether or not you have a local resource local designation studies are incredibly important because local designation provides the most protection for historic resources that's available this is often an area of confusion national registered designation while incredibly important in the scope of federal protections does not automatically come with design review and restrictions on private property local designation however does often come with design review in order to protect character defining elements of a property or character defining elements of a district so that we can understand the history of very often in this instance our build form the designation study makes recommendations against whether or not something is eligible for local designation and also outlines through a very specific and detailed description of the property what the historic elements and the character what we call character defining elements of the property are so that they can be protected so the third step in the preservation planning process is the registration which is the actual formal listing of the property at the state local or national level in minnesota listing at the state level requires an active legislature and it's not really very common so we're not really going to discuss it in detail here that information is readily available and if you contact me later i'll be happy to let you know if your property is located is registered at the state level um so in my work at the shippo whether or not a building is eligible or resources eligible for listing at the national register is the crucial it's the hook it's the crucial piece of information that we need to know about so that we can determine whether or not the financial incentives are available whether or not the regulatory um [Music] the regulatory work is necessary sorry protection protections thank you um so the national register nomination the national register is the official list of properties significant in american history architecture archaeology engineering and culture it was established by the national register the national preservation act of 1966 as part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify evaluate and consider historic resources so it was written to guide federal undertakings but for better or worse it has become the prerequisite for many local and other federal programs like property evaluations and inventor intensive surveys nominations provide context and analysis of significance in relation to national register criteria for evaluation they include full building descriptions with integrity analysis and make recommendations for eligibility they are reviewed multiple times by the state historic preservation office they get then go to the state historic preservation review board for further review and finally on to the national park service for review and we would hope at that point listing although sometimes they do have questions um these documents are often thought of as stagnant but we would like to tell you as national register staff that we love to see up updates to these documents we often will find new contexts that are applicable to buildings and getting that documentation formalized in the national register nomination is incredibly important to understanding all of the aspects of history that our properties are associated with we so there don't think of them as stagnant um however they they do tend to be your um the official document that people are going to look at so the the federal agencies the regulatory agencies the state historic preservation office are not going to ask you what we know about the building we're going to ask you what's in the national register nomination so the more thorough that document can be the better if you have an older one updating it is great if you are working on a new one then we're going to be hard and we're going to ask you lots of questions so that we can truly understand the significance of your property i just saw a comment come up from mary warner and she basically took the words right out of my mouth which is that in preparing national register nominations today i jokingly refer to them as a quick master's thesis but they're often you know and i'm using page counts going to give you an idea but it's not uncommon to see them be 80 plus pages um early nominations particularly those from the 1970s 1980s probably through like 1995 they're a little skinnier um a lot of work was done in minnesota in the 1980s in particular and those nominations can nominate an entire property in a page maybe too um they provide a very brief building description and very little contextual history this is really important because as jenny said often when you're utilizing financial incentives for the reactivation or restoration of properties the national register nomination is the only tool that some review parties some review agencies are going to use to understand your property they may never come to see your farmstead or your building or your park they'll only understand the property through the written documentation of the national register nomination so as jenny noted updating these documents particularly older ones is incredibly important because they are they are the property the way that many agencies are able to understand the property and it's very hard to do that in a page or less and we do still work regularly with private property owners to write national register nominations it's a little bit of a you know a diy so it's a do-it-yourself project uh if you're not a professional in this it's going to take a little bit longer but the state historic preservation office and national register staff are more than willing to help you with this um they help me and when you it's what we do and if you want to hire a consultant or and can through the legacy grant program or it's part of a larger undertaking for the rehabili ation of a property we're still here it's what we do and we love it because we're nerds [Laughter] i'm going to very quickly discuss the landmark local landmark designation as i noted at the local landmark designation study um slide that landmark designation at the local level provides the most rigorous protections for historic properties i often explain them as landmark designation at the local level as having the teeth it comes with protections and design review and it also highlights historic properties and very often historic districts that mean a lot to the local community but may not be eligible those properties may not be eligible for national register designation so they local landmark designation is able to tell really important stories and share really important narratives at the local level the designation as you see here with a local landmark historic district um often covers city blocks districts in particular are really common i think at the local level because you're able to understand your downtown or you're able to understand specific residential development through a number of properties versus an individual building or park the local landmark designation takes place at the local level if you're a certified local government very often the state historic preservation office will review your local landmark designation application and recommend whether or not they concur with the findings so now that we've identified and registered our historic properties we need to understand how to care for them and steward them long term and that's where treatment comes into play there are very specific types of preservation planning documents that provide guidance on treatment and they have a relatively long shelf life i like to think of them as sort of user manuals for your historic property a historic structure report is as it sounds a document that provides a history and treatment recommendations for a historic structure so in this case something built it may be a building but very often it's a water tower or a fire tower as jenny said it is something that has been usually constructed above ground a historic structure report provides a very detailed history of a property an evaluation of its significance a timeline of development and use of the property which means that say if we're talking about a library it will document who the librarian was during a given time period as well as all capital improvements and changes to operating structure that take place within that building so it talks about both the structure itself and the activities that took place within or around the property in addition it provides an evaluation of current conditions and it tells you what needs to be repaired what has been removed from the property what is a non-historic material and it makes recommendations for treatment so it will provide long-term guidance for how to maintain repair and rehabilitate your property a historic structure report has an incredibly long shelf life it provides those recommendations on a one to two year level a three to five year level and a 10 plus year level for improvements and repair the really common when we have an older national registered nomination because the history provided in the historical structure report fills in the blanks that are left when we have just a couple of pages of documentation about the history of the property when the state starts sorry historic preservation office reviews hsrs either because they're written um through one of our programs or um because we're using them we often will we like it when the history section is written in such a way that we can just drag and drop it into the national register update so if your historic structures report doesn't answer all those questions if your national register nomination doesn't answer all those questions about what are the character defining features and what's a period of significance and why a property is significant then hsr will and if it doesn't on its first draft it will by the time we're done indeed a cultural landscape report is much like a historic structure report except that it is for cultural landscapes cultural landscapes can be parks they can be farmsteads here you see glensheen which is a large property that includes both a house and landscaped elements cultural landscapes are incredibly important because they provide treatment recommendations for built designed natural forms they account for change in a way that a historic structure report may not um landscapes that are designed landscapes and include vegetation by their very nature grow adapt and adapt and change over time and a cultural landscape report acknowledges and accommodates for that change in its recommendations much like an hsr these are incredibly valuable user manuals for your historic property and landscape they also help thank you they also help when when we're when the shippo and i can't speak as a designer viewer i am not a design reviewer but when these when treatment options come in when designs come in having an hsr or clr on file that we can reference is going to help preempt a lot of questions we're going to have so having those thorough documents those user manuals ready to go and ready to support whatever decisions treatment decisions you're making is gonna is gonna be really helpful and cut down your review time a conditions assessment is what it sounds like it is a document that evaluates the existing conditions of your historic property and makes recommendations for repair and treatment unlike an hsr the condition assessment does not include a robust evaluation of sort of significance and the documentation of the evolution of a building over time it really is more of a snapshot of current conditions and recommendations for repair it is it is a smaller document and it is more often used and commissioned when a robust national register nomination exists because then that history and the evaluation of what materials are historic is already documented somewhere else design guidelines are available are produced at the local level when we have designated a local landmark um through the local landmark designation process that we discussed before design guidelines are incredibly important they're often prepared by city staff to guide the change within a historic property or district they serve as tool guide tools for property owners to understand how to undertake change on their property while maintaining landmark designation and they serve as guidelines for city staff and hpcs when they're reviewing design applications for historic properties for example if you want to repair your windows design guidelines will often provide a high level instructions on how to do so and if you have to replace a window because it's deteriorated the design guidelines will make recommendations on what the best replacement or new window type should be so they really do provide a lot of valuable information to both a property owner and city staff and with that we finally got through all of the preservation planning documents and we wanted to briefly discuss some case studies and still leave room for questions we felt case studies were incredibly important in the conversation today because they show how these preservation planning tools result in the reactivation of historic space and buildings our first case study is pv plaza in minneapolis which shows how preservation planning tools were used in a state compliance project pv plaza was constructed in 1975 and as you can see here it was a terrorist it is a terrorist um modern concrete city civic plaza and landscaped area um over time the water features at pv plaza stopped functioning the fountains were not operable because the plumbing in the underground had been broken um and because the plaza was constructed in 1975 and is composed of a number of terraces it was not ada accessible and the city of minneapolis which owns and operates the plaza really felt that it was important that all of its residents would be able to use the plaza pv plaza was listed in the national register of historic places in 2011 pardon me for not knowing that right off the top of my head and the documentation was incredibly thorough and it explained both the significance of pv plaza the character defining elements and materials and really clearly articulated what was important about this place both at a national level and within the city of minneapolis this guided the treatment recommendations in the historic structure report that the city of minneapolis commissioned in which was prepared by miller dunwoody damon farber and hess royce all his consultants and architects and landscape architects the historic structure report made very clear recommendations on how to repair the historic concrete at the plaza how to sensitively add ada accessible ramps to the plaza and how to reactivate the space for 21st century users the historic structure report then allowed the design team that led the reactivation of pv plaza which was led by cohen and partners in which full disclosure my firm new history worked on in making decisions with the city of minneapolis and project stakeholders on how best to activate the plaza repair historic materials and provide ada accessibility and improve both the function and the environmental sustainability of the water features pv used to lose about a hundred thousand gallons of water a week i believe and so by adding some new fountain features and new working with a fountain consultant we were able to dramatically reduce the water usage within the plaza and so through the national register document and the hsr we were also able to and sarah is on the call today sarah's team at the state historic preservation office was able to review the impacts of the proposed design changes at pv plaza through the lens of the historic structure report the national register nomination and as a result we have a pixelated picture my apologies a reactivated plaza that is fully accessible people who have limited mobility or limited sight are able to access all elements of the plaza and we have water features that are once again operational for the first time in well over a decade and people can enjoy the plaza um you see children running through it now because we have just a scream of water and it's been a remarkably successful project our next case study is the fort selling visitor center which is currently under construction at fort snelling here in minnesota and this shows how planning tools were essential in a successful state and federal compliance project fort snelling is a national historic landmark it is listed in the national register of historic places and it has incredible incredible sacred importance to the dakota people and other native american tribes here in minnesota it's an incredibly complex site that has both been a military fort and a site of internment and incarceration and massacres so it has really complex and varied histories and it plays it has incredible significance and importance to a wide variety of stakeholders the minnesota historical society operates fort snelling and over the past few years they've been planning for a new visitor center and a new visitor experience at the fort and the plan has been to reactivate a 1907 barracks which you see here in 1909 as a visitor center and to rehabilitate the landscape to tell more diverse stories including native american and dakota stories specifically and to do some prairie restoration this project would not have been possible frankly without very specific preservation planning documents as i noted fort snelling is listed in the national register of historic places and it's a national historic landmark the documentation for that property is being updated by the state historic preservation office in consultation with stakeholders to acknowledge both the native american significance and i think broaden the architectural and archaeological significance of the site um historic fort snelling is also fortnightly is also a complete all of it is an active archaeological site and so when we undertake projects at this property we have to be really sensitive to both above ground underground and traditional cultural resources to that end we had two treatment documents that were prepared to inform the project both a historic structure report for the barracks buildings and a cultural landscape report for the greater fort snelling landscape the cultural landscape report in particular was incredibly important because it provided a lot of information about the development of the landscape at fort snelling over time from um including pre-european contact landscape development as well as the impact that the united states military had on those landscape forums um both of these documents guided the rehabilitation design and the review of this project by the state historic preservation office and the national park service and resulted in a project that is currently being constructed that will have a new visitor experience at fort snelling including a visitor center in a former calvary barracks as well as really incredible landscape design that provides narrative materials and interpretive materials to tell a more diverse story at fort smelling that both includes the military history which the fort is known for but also expands on that history to provide much more context into the native american history of the site our final case study is the hope engine company number three in st paul which shows how planning tools benefited a historic rehabilitation tax credit project hope engine company number three is the oldest extent fire station in the city of saint paul it was constructed in the 1870s the city of saint paul decommissioned the fire station in the 1960s at which time the station was acquired by a private owner um a local contracting firm who used the building as storage using the building of storage frankly was a great use from the perspective of historic material retention because the building wasn't changed at the interior at all over the past 40 years however there was extensive change at the exterior and additions surrounded this fire station to the point that the the building appeared to encompass a full city block and when the fire station was acquired by a private developer it was in some ways difficult to see that a historic fire station was buried within all of this additional construction um the city of saint paul at the same time was evaluating all of its historic fire stations or all of its older fire stations and it was aware that it was going to be decommissioning some of those properties and probably selling them to proper private property owners so they undertook a historic context of historic fire stations in saint paul and that historic context provided a deep and robust history of how the saint paul fire department developed over time and evaluated all of the fire stations that were extent in the city um within the time period of the context for both local and national register eligibility that evaluation was a historic resulted in a historic resource survey that proved incredibly valuable because it recommended the hope engine company number three as both locally and nationally eligible or nationally significant this resulted in the preparation of a national register of historic places nomination full disclosure i prepared that nomination and i couldn't have done so without the guidance and collaboration of dennis gardner at the minnesota shippo as jenny said the state historic preservation office is an incredible partner in the preparation of these documents well beyond their review obligations the national register nomination positioned this project for state and financial state and federal tax incentives through the historic rehabilitation tax credit program without those rehabilitation tax incentives this property because of its size and the cost of rehabilitating the project wouldn't have been possible to rehabilitate so the hope engine company number three is now the help breakfast bar which is an incredibly popular restaurant that through the recent kova 19 crisis has also served as a food bank for residents of the city of st paul and as i said prop these projects all three of them but i would say this one in particular would not have been possible if the historic preservation planning documents that we talked about today hadn't been undertaken because they saved a lot of time they provided provided a lot of insight into what materials needed to be repaired and retained and they gave the state historic preservation office guidance on how to review each of these projects vinnie thanks tamara yeah the thing we want you to walk away with is preservation planning is um is not an easy thing to undertake it takes a lot of a lot of work and it requires a lot of information but to use these documents in a proactive way is going to ultimately save uh the time and energy when it comes to projects whether or not you know they're coming um like you know potential historic preservation tax credits in a district or whether or not you know you don't know they're coming like you know disaster um disaster recovery so please think of these as a long-term investment in your historic properties um thank you we have about four minutes for questions i am willing to stick around a little bit longer if tamara is as well if people still have uh still have questions yeah thank you thanks jenny and tamara excellent presentation i only have a couple questions in the q a so people if you have questions get them in now and we can try to fit a few in so mary asks where can intensive surveys or property evaluations be found by researchers or the public so those are actually found in the state historic preservation office files we have them you can contact either me directly or our inventory manager jim krumri through a data request and we can take a look at those for you and get them scanned and out to you we're working very diligently to get them digitally available but right now they're in the office and file folders i would add to that that um a lot of the context studies that are have been written um particularly in the past five years or so are often digitally available through the very often the city that commissioned yeah thank you mary also asks if you have a landscape with a building do you need to create both both a historic structures report and cultural landscape report or can you just have a cultural landscape report with a building as part of it you can absolutely just have a cultural landscape report with a building as part of it that's an excellent question mary um yeah go ahead i was gonna use for example the fort snelling cultural landscape report does mention the buildings and there's some overlap there yeah yes and there's some overlap there um i like to think of you know a fairgrounds for example as a cultural landscape and that would be a situation where you have a number of built structures and i would evaluate them as part of the clr marjorie also asks similar to mary's first question can you provide an update on how the public can access chippewa reports and files jenny you alluded to that but maybe a little bit more generally sure so the data practices sorry the data request at chippo um email that is on our website is how you would at this time during the pandemic access those documents um jim krumrai or another staff member when we're in the office can get those scanned and out to you we do ask that you are patient with us staff is only allowed into the uh the actual office to access the files um we have one staff member in one day a week so we are working hard to to respond to those and kind of doing all hands on deck but if you contact jem um then he will make sure that that is that is done as quickly as possible and i have a question from andrea after a context is developed is there a typical or common number of properties which are expected to be determined eligible among all of those in the context no that's a mess of a math problem for you yes it's a math problem so a context will provide the documentation for comparative analysis so a property needs to be to be outstanding to be significant when compared to other like properties within its context so that can be local regional or national statewide national like the mpdf on banks it tells you a context will give you the information to determine which of those banks is the most the most significant and how to tell that story sometimes multiple buildings can be significant if the context are different right so if you have one library building that is significant for its early 20th century architecture and you have one library building that's significant for its mid-century architecture you have an architectural context on libraries in your town that actually has two that are significant um you could end up with a library that is part of a larger community district you know a civic district that is eligible because it is in congress with things around it um a context does not intentionally limit the or promote the number of properties that will be eligible what it will do is give the preparer of those documentations sufficient information to argue for eligibility as an example i just recently completed a context for the city of minneapolis that is minneapolis in the modern era in 1930 to 1975 and it covers 45 years of of city history um and some of that is architecturally specific and a lot of it is about social developments and political developments and the impact of the war on the city and it intentionally does not have a robust list of properties to recommend because that could be thousands of properties um what it does is provide the i hate to say context but i mean that's what all the contacts it provides a framework for evaluation and and i jokingly say as a consultant then like my my job is to make that work for whatever the property is that i'm looking at um i like to think that every property is eligible as jenny would tell you you just have to find the right story jenny would disagree with me but that's why we have different jobs i would encourage i would encourage a creative and out of the box thinking when it comes to eligibility but yeah not quite as many as tamara likes to think is eligible yeah it's good to be positive and open-minded so look at the buildings yeah it's 1102. i have one more question it looks like unless anyone's one squeeze one in but ethan asks do you have any experiences where public engagement has significantly changed oops i'm sorry it just there we go it like moved on me while i was reading it do you have any experiences where public engagement has significantly changed the context of a site or added another layer of history that wasn't captured in any context study or nomination form tamara i'm gonna punt that one to you i don't i don't do a lot of community engagement yeah i would say you know my experience um the contexts that i've worked on you know not necessarily um that being said we've we've talked about some contexts here um such as the african-american context in the city of saint paul um where certainly community engagement absolutely informed the direction that that context took and what was included within it um i would say that similarly well not a context i know that quinn evans architects which prepared the cultural landscape report for fort smelling depended heavily on community engagement to inform the historic narrative in that report and and it i don't want to speak for that team but i i know that the community engagement was incredibly valuable to the ultimate man that was that was prepared and and the information that was included therein and i can say from uh in answering ethan's question from an environmental review perspective that certainly is has happened and it's an important part of the section 106 process is when um when an evaluation of a historic property or archaeological historic structure is done as part of a 106 review that the federal agency shares that with the public and other consulting parties there have been instances where consulting party or the public um say well you really miss this part of the story or and tribal consultation has done the same thing and that's why that process is so important to engage those other parties um and it's not just shippo looking at it to bring in other layers of significance that may have been missed by the by that consultant who's evaluating it at all we don't want it to work in a vacuum we want people to provide their input so that definitely happens in the 106 um as a historian and and i can speak to you know my training i am dependent on what's available in an archive and often what gets saved in an archive is is incredibly biased like you have to decide that you want your stuff in an archive and that you know we are we are really dependent on what gets saved and so without community engagement i can't know what what other people know i can't know what somebody might have in their own you know in their basement or in their attic which informs the story i can't know oral traditions and stories that have been passed down if they're not documented somewhere in an archive for me to access and so as sarah said like without community engagement i only know what i can research and word search in in newspapers and in archival holdings and when when your report is passed along to our office we can only rely on what is given to us through the federal agencies so it's not that we're ignoring what other stories might be out there but that's the beautiful part of the regulations as tamara knows we love we love the regulations and that that they do uh require the agencies to go out and present this information on a broader scale than just a chipotle so we are at 1106. i don't see any questions uh mike or john any final wrap-ups here thank you everybody for joining us yeah it it does look like we have one more question that came in through chat um if you guys don't mind molly patterson lundgren would like to know more about the hope fire station which documents were used to support the removal of non-significant additions for the reuse project excellent question molly um the the great news is that we were able to use both the the building description um from from the survey documentation as well as just our own site observations um when when you go inside the fire station the exterior walls are very clear um and it's mass masonry construction so it was easy to identify where the building ended um when you were inside the the editions and then i would say what was really what contributed to the deep understanding of what to repair and restore at the interior was that the fire department in st paul kept a century's worth of records including all of their capital expenditures so you know we and i think that's an important note with with surveys intensive and recon we don't go inside buildings we really are still doing an exterior snapshot 90 of the time um so it was the national register nomination and and the research that we conducted for that that really explained what was historic at the interior and what needed to be retained because we could do sort of that next level of deep research on changes to the structure does that answer your question i guess you have to check it at me if it doesn't i'm sure she's nodding i don't also she has my number molly you can call me well thank you both and i don't think there's anything anything else here thanks everybody for joining us i'm going a little bit overlapping we have two more sessions next week um if you haven't signed up register uh for the final two sessions i think the the final one next thursday is still tbd but i think there'll be an announcement soon about what that will entail bye y'all thanks bye everybody great thanks everybody [Music] thanks