Nashville isn’t a very big place, in land mass or population. How much are we going to allow future residents to change it, and how do we allow for the kind of growth and investment that will sustain it without losing its historic charm?
Those are the kinds of questions the Nashville Development Review Commission is talking through as it continues to study a new historic preservation ordinance.
The town’s current ordinances don’t prevent an owner from tearing down a building, even one that could be deemed historic. The DRC has to review plans to alter some buildings, but only on business- or buffer-zoned land; it does not have oversight of residential properties, no matter their history. And little in the current ordinances allows the town to take action against owners of properties that are left to fall apart.
The ordinance the DRC is considering would establish one or more historic districts in Nashville, and require every building in them to be evaluated according to its architectural and historic significance to the district. In the draft, those ratings are “outstanding,” “notable,” “contributing” or “non-contributing.”
Even historic buildings that aren’t excellent examples can contribute to the character of the area, said Laura Renwick, an Indiana Landmarks adviser to the DRC.
“Non-contributing” buildings could include those that are less than 50 years old, or older buildings that have lost their historic significance because of alterations over the years.
The town has already lost at least one structure in recent years that had architectural significance: The Queen Anne-style home that used to sit at the corner of Main and Johnson streets. The town sued the owner because of a consistent lack of maintenance, and he ended up tearing it down, said James T. Roberts, the town’s attorney.
“We don’t want to lose the value that our town’s very eclectic and hard-to-define architecture and its nice little village look has established. And I think we were fortunate over the years that the look of the town shaped up because one person owned a lot of the buildings, and those buildings were maintained and remodeled and built according to his tastes, and that gave us what is the Nashville look,” Roberts said.
“That unity of ownership doesn’t exist anymore, and we want to hang onto this look. It gives all the property greater value than it would if it were in Morgantown.”
The DRC has not defined the area or the buildings that the historic district could include. Members plan to do a walk-through and initial survey of the buildings that might be considered and notify those property owners. But there could be other, scattered properties in town — including residential properties — that also are important to preserve, DRC members have said. And that would be another departure from the DRC’s current role, as it only deals with commercial property right now.
The owner of one of those properties — the Banner-Brummett House, known as the oldest house in the county — came to the DRC’s November meeting just for that reason. “That’s why I’m here,” said Darrell Ghere. “I want to hear what you’re going to try to force me to do or not do.”
Another audience member, Andrew Tilton, said he was interested in some of the buildings that could be considered historic and he wanted to know what he could be getting into before he puts any purchase offers in. If he bought the Nashville House, for instance, would he be allowed to put on a second story? Or could he tear it down and build something more like the original Nashville House, which was destroyed by fire in the 1940s?
Right now, with the town’s current definition of “historic” being anything built before Pearl Harbor Day, the Nashville House wouldn’t be considered historic, said DRC member Rick Kelley.
There are also some 50-year-old buildings in town that wouldn’t normally be thought of as historic buildings, like the manufactured home that Roberts owns downtown, he said.
Deciding what is and isn’t an important historic building and what area the district includes should and will be part of a public process, Roberts and Renwick said.
“I think the key to it being successful is community support,” Roberts said. “What we do here is something that should be acceptable to the community. It should be considered a bonus to an owner to have his property designated as a historical property.”
Ghere, who bought the Banner-Brummett House a few months ago, said he doesn’t want to end up getting restrictions or requirements put on his property that limits what he can do with it. For instance, the front wall is sloping, and he was thinking about putting a porch on the hand-hewn log cabin to help stabilize it. He wanted to know if that would be prohibited.
Renwick and DRC President Penny Scroggins said they wouldn’t be opposed to that, because a porch wouldn’t be out of character and because his aim in altering it is to preserve it.
Ghere said he had planned to make it into a tourist home because its condition makes it tough to rent out long-term. “My first thought was that house needs to be given to the public,” he said. “… The public will be willing to stay there for a night or two, but I can’t get anybody to rent it and stay there for a year.”
He saw his other options as extensively renovating the house by putting in drywall and vinyl siding and changing the windows and the roof to make it rentable long-term, or tearing it down and building something else.
Roberts mentioned possibly giving property owners incentives, like tax abatement, to keep up their historic properties so that being in the district didn’t become a burden.
“The whole idea is to preserve what’s good. It’s not to freeze history,” Roberts said.
Besides a definition for what “preservation” entails, DRC members asked to see a definition of “economic return.” According to the draft ordinance, in order to get permission to tear a historic building down, an owner would have to show that it is incapable of earning an economic return.
For example, the Ferguson House, built around 1910, needs some work, and little fixes can add up quickly, said DRC member Bruce Gould. “Is there an economic return on investing money into that property?” he asked.
The idea of “economic return” probably doesn’t take into account the value that a building’s story has, Kelley added. The Ferguson House is being rented as shop space, but it used to be a boarding house where artists such as Gustave Baumann stayed, he said.
One of the main ideas of the preservation ordinance is to “make the hoops a little smaller” for people to jump through who want to demolish historic buildings, Roberts said.
However, not everything in town can reasonably be kept, Tilton pointed out. There isn’t a lot of land in Nashville that isn’t in floodplain, and “if the entire town becomes a small hoop to jump through, you’re going to scare off people who want to bring population back to Nashville.”
Land needs to open up where multifamily housing could be built or tiny houses could be put, he said. He wondered if the preservation ordinance would become “more of a hindrance for people to move in and establish roots.” He’d like to see a comprehensive economic development plan of what should be saved and what could open up, “something for people to be able to put their money in, the next generation of Nashville.”
He’s one of those people, he said. He was born “down the street” and his great-grandfather owned the Nashville House before the Rogers family did, he said. “I know we want to preserve historical buildings, but we don’t have a lot of places to put things,” he said.
“(Nashville) could be an awesome place, a lot better than it is now, but we don’t want to restrict that from happening, from scaring people away before they walk in the door.”
However, town leaders also don’t want to “kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” allowing a lot of change to the point that it hurts what people love about Nashville, Renwick said.
The DRC planned to produce a report for Roberts, who helped to write this ordinance from an Indiana Landmarks template. He doesn’t expect the town council to take action on it until the newly elected council members are able to look it over, possibly at the Jan. 17 regular meeting.
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If the town decides to create one or more historic districts under this proposed ordinance, every structure in the district could be surveyed and designated as “outstanding,” “notable,” “contributing” or “non-contributing.”
“Outstanding,” “notable” or “contributing” structures would have to be at least 50 years old, and their rating would be based on their historical and architectural significance.
“Non-contributing” structures could be less than 50 years old, or they could be older structures that have lost their historical significance because of alterations over the years.
The Nashville Development Review Commission plans to notify property owners who could be affected.
In the draft ordinance, a person who owns property in the historic district would have to ask the Historic Preservation Commission for a “certificate of appropriateness” to demolish or move any building; add an addition, reconstruct, alter, or change the color of a historic building; or construct a new building that’s visible from a public street. If the property is in the “primary area” of a historic district, permission also would be needed to change walls or fences on the property along public streets; or to add an addition, reconstruct, alter, or change the color of a building that isn’t historic.
If the commission denied a “certificate of appropriateness” to demolish a historic building, the owner would then have to prove that the building was “incapable of earning an economic return on its value,” and then specific “interested parties” would have to be given notice that it may be demolished. The waiting period to actually take it down could be between 60 days and a year depending on how important the Historic Preservation Commission deemed that structure to be.
That waiting period could give an “interested party” time to save it. “Interested parties” named in the proposed ordinance are the town council, the DRC or Historical Preservation Commission, the Area Plan Commission, a neighborhood association in the historic district, an owner of property in the historic district, a state historic preservation officer or the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana.
If a property owner decided to tear a building down without any permission, or before the waiting period was up, he or she could face a stiff fine. Amounts in the draft ordinance range between $1,000 and $25,000 per day.
In addition to reviewing plans for properties in the historic district, the Historic Preservation Commission would have the authority to buy, sell, lease or receive gifts of property “appropriate for carrying out the purposes of the commission,” the draft ordinance says.
Nashville’s current ordinances do not allow governing boards to step in and stop a demolition, even if the structures are historic. The most the town council can do is to require an owner to wait 45 days before demolishing anything.
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