Omaha By Design: Omaha, Only Better

The City of Omaha has the ability to create local historic districts, but few have been formed in the last two decades. Why the low number?

One hypothesis is that although property owners may see the value in protecting the historic character of their neighborhoods, they’re concerned about the added regulations that come with a local historic district designation.

Omaha by Design, in partnership with the City of Omaha, is launching a pilot project aimed at overcoming these concerns in order to encourage the preservation of Omaha’s historic neighborhoods. The project will combine the use of traditional historic preservation tools with one of the city’s recently enhanced urban design tools – the Neighborhood Conservation and Enhancement Overlay District – to give property owners more options for preserving the character of their historic neighborhoods.

“As it stands today, a neighborhood interested in creating a local historic district either accepts the full set of regulations that come with the designation or the area in question is provided no protection at all,” said Connie Spellman, director of Omaha by Design. “We feel many neighborhoods would be interested in seeking protection if there was a middle ground.”

The Neighborhood Conservation and Enhancement (NCE) Overlay District, strengthened during the development of the city’s Urban Design Element, allows the City of Omaha – in cooperation with neighborhood groups – to identify those physical characteristics of an area that a neighborhood feels are of special importance and create “form-based” regulations to preserve and protect those features. Since the NCE concept was enhanced in 2007, two Omaha neighborhoods – Dundee and S. 10^th Street – have stepped up to create NCE Overlay Districts that indirectly address aspects of their area’s historic character.

Unlike the current local historic district regulations, which are governed by the Landmark Heritage Preservation section of the city’s code, the NCE Overlay District provides great flexibility in the development of form-based guidelines for both older and newer areas of the city. “We believe property owners would be interested in developing a fundamental set of guidelines, much like covenants in newer neighborhoods, that establish a basic level of protection for their historic area,” Spellman said. “We will be testing this theory by funding a pilot project to create an NCE Overlay District in one of Omaha’s historic neighborhoods.”

Omaha by Design also wants to minimize the work of the city and ensure that property owners are not unduly delayed when undertaking future projects within the district, Spellman noted.  Therefore, an additional goal is the development of a systematic process that can be replicated and regulations that can be easily administered by the city’s planning department.

Omaha by Design has hired Steven Jensen Consulting to help develop the district. Omaha by Design will serve as the project manager, and the city’s planning department will be responsible for the formal approval and administration of the district. In the coming weeks, the group will identify a neighborhood that’s willing to participate in the project.

Once a neighborhood is identified:

• Its physical and historic characteristics will be documented.
• A detailed physical survey covering public spaces, building forms and massing, and architectural styles and ornamentation will be conducted.
• A “pattern book” that provides a visual, comprehensive breakdown of the neighborhood’s physical characteristics will be created. It also will contain a complete checklist of the physical features that could be included in the overlay district regulations.
• Workshops will be held for the neighborhood’s property owners to present the survey findings and discuss the pattern book content. The first workshop will focus on informing the local stakeholders about the characteristics that make their neighborhood unique and why they are important to protect. The second workshop will focus on identifying the particular features they want to include in the NCE Overlay District for protection and regulation.
• The consultant will work in partnership with the city’s planning department throughout the entire process, culminating in the creation of the actual NCE Overlay District and its regulations. The district will then be presented to the Omaha Planning Board and the Omaha City Council for their respective consideration.

The goal is to have the overlay district and its regulations developed by March of 2012, Spellman said.

The pilot project is the outgrowth of work conducted by Omaha by Design’s Conservation, Preservation and Restoration (CPR) Committee, which was formed last fall to begin looking at what role the organization could play in augmenting existing preservation efforts in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro. The goal of the committee, which stems from the Civic Omaha section of the city’s Urban Design Element, is to bring an urban design perspective to issues affecting the region’s built heritage by analyzing the existing environment and developing an appropriate set of strategies for programs, projects and policies that promote its conservation, preservation and restoration.

For more information about the neighborhood historic preservation pilot project, contact Omaha by Design at 402.554.4010 or info@omahabydesign.org. For more information about Omaha by Design’s CPR Committee, visit http://www.omahabydesign.org/projects/urban-design-element/civic-omaha/cpr/.