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Wheeling leaders focus on preservation

WHEELING — City leaders who want to protect Wheeling’s historic buildings from the wrecking ball sat down Thursday to discuss how best to do so — and who should be responsible for it.

Wheeling City Council and the city’s historic landmarks commission held a joint work session Thursday on the possibility of establishing a municipal review process for building demolition in the city’s historic districts.

Historic Landmarks Commission Chairman Charles “C.J.” Kaiser said existing policy already offers a framework to impose additional regulations on demolition, and do so with authority. Commission member Victor Greco, an architect by trade, agreed, saying city officials need to give those regulations “teeth” in order to achieve the desired goal of preservation.

The meeting started what will be an ongoing discussion. The end goal is to implement checks and balances which would slow a property owner from destroying a building that contributes to a historic district or is individually listed with the National Register of Historic Places. The city hopes to preserve these districts because of their perceived economic and cultural value.

“What I think is key is creating expectations for property owners which currently don’t exist,” Mayor Glenn Elliott said. “What I think is changing now — and I think we’d all agree — is, at least downtown, the economic realities are making a lot of these buildings actually more valuable than they might have been 15 years ago.”

Elliott suggested a review process include an initial review completed by city administration prior to consideration by the historic landmarks commission. But Assistant Director of Economic and Community Development Tom Connelly said if Wheeling alters its zoning ordinance to strengthen protections for historic buildings, it should be the Wheeling Planning Commission that is tasked with reviewing demolition.

The Historic Landmarks Commission, Connelly suggested, could instead oversee the new construction that may follow demolition.

Elliott said he does not want the city to impede necessary demolition, but instead protect buildings with an opportunity for reuse.

Other options discussed to enforce demolition guidelines were creating localized historic districts with individual mandates of appropriateness and providing the historic landmarks commission additional authority by using home rule.

Currently, for private property owners, the requirements for demolition are an application, permit fee and disconnecting building utilities.

Commission member Gregory Smith said individual historic districts would require much time to create, although Elliott said such an approach would avoid a one-size-fits-all review process. Sixth Ward Councilman Dave Palmer, a former city code official, said it’s important any review process operate on a case-by-case basis.

Two existing districts, Chapline Row and the Centre Market area, already operate under design review standards that require property owners to obtain a certificate of appropriateness from the historic landmarks commission before undertaking exterior renovations. But those rules, while they would apply to infill development, don’t offer any additional safeguards against demolition.

Elliott said he wonders whether Wheeling’s vacant building registration program, which imposes fees on owners of vacant structures, incentivizes demolition. If so, he said the city could amend the program to discourage such behavior.

“I’m hoping that people who own property can maybe change their perspective a little bit, so we as a whole can realize what we want Wheeling to look like,” 4th Ward Councilwoman Wendy Scatterday said. “We need to move beyond the personal interest of the personal property perspective.”

Scatterday said there will certainly be pushback from some property owners, and she stressed the city remain sensitive to those concerns, which she said are rooted in American values.

Overall, the group appeared to be in favor of additional steps to preserve Wheeling’s building stock. For now, it’s a decision of how and to what degree.

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