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Athens Historic Preservation Board Under Consideration
By: Yingchi Wei
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The future of a possible Athens Historic Preservation Board is now in the hands of the city's law director.
The Athens City Council is considering establishing a board to look at the issue of creating a historic preservation district.
City Planner Paul Louge addressed the necessity of creating a historic preservation district at a city council committee meeting on Monday.
Logue says the first step is to establish the board to look into it.
"The board will have five voting members and two alternatives. All members are appointed by mayor. They should have a sort of background of local history, architecture, land use law and planning," says Logue.
Several planning and development committee members said they are glad to see this has been taken into consideration.
Council member Christine Fahl (D-4th Ward) says she thinks this is a better way to do it.
"I would like to point out this is not establishing district or anything else, but providing for a transparent and democratic way of providing input for public and have experts be able to look at inventory and such in the city," says Fahl.
Logue says he believes creating a historic preservation district is beneficial to the city of Athens.
"When you look around the state of Ohio, you see that historic preservation is the normal, not the exception. Athens has the history you can get in Ohio. We've got one of the oldest universities here. We have been established as city since 1797. So, we have 250 years in here," Logue says.