Todd Kuhns on City Council

Last Friday, Justin Puckett, Ken Shook, Cole Woodcox and I took a day off to travel to Jefferson City. We attended the meeting of the Missouri Advisory Council of Historic Preservation, which was hearing about 20 nominations for state historic buildings and districts, including Kirksville’s first State and National Historic District nomination – which we ourselves had submitted.

What led us to this? As many folks know, Justin has been very active in purchasing and restoring real estate downtown – the Art Deco building and the Baxter-Miller building, among others. A while back, while he was fixing up the Art Deco building and putting apartments in it, somebody told him he should’ve applied for state historic tax credits for assistance. When he began looking into renovating the Cochran building, he decided that it would be an impossible project without aid, so he began to educate himself on these tax credits. And when he and I went into the Pickler building, we thought it would also be a perfect candidate for historic tax credits.

So back in August, we submitted a nomination for the Pickler building to the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). It’s a lengthy and detailed application involving hundreds of detailed photographs of the interior and exterior from every possible angle and a well-researched commercial history of the building and arguments for its significance. Simultaneously, we submitted another very detailed application for the historic tax credits, which required having an architect (in this case, K.A. Shook Design) draw up detailed plans for the renovation and more photographs and forms.

Unfortunately, they turned us down. They said the building failed on the point of architectural significance, citing the metal canopy and the stucco material over the original facade. At this time, we had just begun demolition on the building and we argued that we intend to strip off the facade and canopy. But until that was done, they wouldn’t look at it any further.

Now, another idea the SHPO office had was to nominate the entire downtown square as a historic district – it’s a natural candidate. The county seat, the historic courthouse, the fact that the Battle of Kirksville was fought there, that it was the center of development for the town, etc. If the downtown were declared a historic district, then our building could be a “contributing structure” to the historic district and qualify for those tax credits.

But they shot that down too after seeing the current condition of our buildings downtown. They said that the metal awnings and metal “slipcovers” over the original facades would keep it from EVER being declared historic. Until those items came down, we didn’t stand a chance.

In the meantime, we were busy stripping the stucco off the facade of the Pickler Building, revealing an amazingly well-preserved brick facing beneath. The original window holes were there and just filled in with masonry brick, so we had the masons open those back up too. I took some pics of this new find and compared the architecture with other buildings around the square, sending this new info to the architects at the SHPO office for a second review. 

That’s when they started to get excited. But not because of the Pickler building.

Instead, now that we had stripped off the stucco and removed the canopy, they saw that more than 60 percent of that block of Harrison was now original facade and in good shape. Our work had tipped the scales and they suggested we apply for an entire district along the north side of the square and pick up the courthouse. They convinced us that it would be just as easy to submit the nomination for the whole district as for a single building.

So we enlisted the volunteer expertise of Cole Woodcox, who has worked for the SHPO and has had experience in writing these historic nomination applications. He graciously agreed to help, and did the lion’s share of the work putting this together for the November deadline, along with two subsequent revision deadlines in December and January.

And so here we were on Friday – sitting and watching Cole give a killer Powerpoint presentation to the advisory council, making our case. Watching that excellent presentation and those that came before it, it became clear how special our district in Kirksville is. There are so many different styles and periods of architecture represented in that small area. You could see the council’s interest peaked.

The council also responded very favorably to the support of the community behind it – with letters of support from most of the property owners in the district, as well as the City Council and State Representative Rebecca McClanahan, a SHPO representative said that this was the most supported district nomination she had ever seen. It passed unanimously.

So the next step is the Federal review, where it is expected to pass without a problem. The whole process should be complete within 60-90 days. The beautiful thing is that this makes it MUCH easier for ANY owner of a “contributing structure” in this new district to apply for state and federal historic tax credits for their own renovation projects. Now that the groundwork has been laid, it’s a simple checkbox on the form.

We hope we will eventually be able to expand the boundaries of the district to include the whole square and the side streets around it. But in order for that to happen, the metal slipcovers and canopies will have to come down, as per DREAM and SHPO recommendations. My hope is that, once the building owners realize the benefits involved, they will be more comfortable making that plunge.

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