Photo by Jana Peterson

When citizens talked Comprehensive Plan at City Hall in May, downtown redevelopment got the most stickers.

Wednesday, August 11, 1999

When citizens talked Comprehensive Plan at City Hall in May, downtown redevelopment got the most stickers. That meant downtown redevelopment rated in the most people’s – of those present at the meeting – top three priorities.

Keeping that and the city’s downtown renovation loans in mind, planning/zoning administrator Craig Hoium and planning intern Marty Schulz have been working on the possibility of enacting a Heritage Preservation ordinance for downtown. This type of ordinance, if adopted, provides minimum standards for historic buildings and others in the downtown area. So far the pair have completed a draft of a design manual, which offers general guidelines, and two possible zoning ordinances.

"It would establish some standards, for example, if people were going to be refacing their buildings, require that the architectural design have some historical value," Hoium explained to the Austin Planning Commission at a workshop Tuesday evening.

"It wouldn’t be something we would say would have to be done by such and such a time, it would only be if people were planning to do the work anyway," he said. "To establish certain guidelines … I don’t think we would want every building to look the same."

Hoium said he didn’t believe Austin would go so far as the Pella, Iowas, of the world. Pella – a small town in Iowa where every business building is required to have a Dutch-style facade – was the destination for a recent pilgrimage by Austin residents and city officials. Planning commission member Janet Anderson pointed out that Austin doesn’t share Pella’s mostly homogeneous background.

Schulz, who interned with Hoium over the summer, included two examples of ordinances and design guidelines passed by other Minnesota cities – Stillwater and Red Wing – along with the draft for Austin.