Heritage Preservation Regulation: Improve and adapt heritage preservation and land use regulations to recognize City goals, current preservation practices, and emerging historical contexts.
THIS POLICY SUPPORTS GOALS:
THIS POLICY RELATES TO TOPICS:
Minneapolis has over 1,000 historic properties that embody significant events, development patterns, architecture, and people. These properties are citywide assets that the City must help steward for generations to come. Effectively helping steward these properties requires expanding the understanding and appreciation of the significance of the resources, including the importance of materials, details, and designs that convey a property’s identity. It also means allowing historic properties to evolve while protecting them from identity changing alterations.
ACTION STEPS
The City will seek to accomplish the following action steps to improve and adapt heritage preservation and land use regulations to recognize City goals, current preservation practices, and emerging historical contexts.
- Strengthen existing historic district guidelines and require consistent guidelines for all new local districts and landmarks.
- Ensure landmark, historic district, and conservation district design guidelines are tailored to protect the criteria of significance for which a property is designated.
- Identify the character defining features and paramount views of resources as part of the design guideline process.
- Create and use design guidelines for historic landscapes.
- Research and modify regulations as they relate to demolition of historic resources and mitigation for demolition.
- Develop, refine, and apply tools, such as transfer of development rights and historic variances to retain historic properties.
- Recruit Heritage Preservation Commissioners that are representative of all residents of the city, including cultural communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, and other communities that have traditionally been underrepresented.
- Support preservation education for Heritage Preservation Commission staff and Commissioners.
- Explore and develop proactive strategies, such as a Scenic Resources Protection Plan, to conserve view corridors associated with major historic landmarks.