Egyptian-style architecture

Yesterday morning the Kirksville Historic Preservation Commission (KHPC) presented certificates to the Masonic Temple and the owners of some buildings on the north side of the square – Kirksville’s first historic district. There are great stories about the event on KTVO and the Kirksville Daily Express that detail what this means.

The KHPC formed only last year and is already making great steps forward. Thanks to a grant, they were able to commission an expert survey of the downtown area for potential historic properties. The results should be coming in soon and a similar survey of the entire city will follow shortly thereafter, thanks to a second grant.

The event was emceed by Lynn Daniels, the brand new Executive Director of the Kirksville Downtown Improvement Committee. Thanks to DREAM, we were able to receive another grant to fund this full-time position. One of Lynn’s charges is to find a source of continuous funding for the position. Her job is to be an advocate for the downtown, bringing together the property and business owners, city & county governments, citizens, tourism, KDIC and other parties with a stake in downtown revitalization to work together to improve commerce in the area. She’s in her first month and already hitting the streets to meet people and make plans.

Anyway, the turnout was great. Thank you to all who were able to attend. For more info, you can also check out the Frequently Asked Questions that I put together for the event, which details how and why the Kirksville Courthouse Square Historic District came to be.

Check out the streaming video.

You can subscribe to Missouri Focus, the DED’s monthly newsletter, here.

Ultimately, we would end up with a Historic Preservation Commission that would nominate or recommend properties to the Planning and Zoning Commission and then City Council for historic designation. Construction standards for these designate properties would then have to meet the appropriate standards for a historic structure.

Implementing this program will have a financial component including the costs of the initial public hearings and appropriate training for members of the Commission, plaques and markers identifying the designated properties, and informational resources. But the Council believes historic preservation is important enough to warrant that.

dream-newsletter-june-08

For more info on the Missouri DREAM Initiative, visit the website: http://www.dream.mo.gov

Cherie, the new Assistant to the City Manager, told the group that she is setting up a series of conference calls with our PGAV liaison. PGAV is the contracted consultants with the DREAM Initiative. They have a 96-question survey that they would like to conduct with the downtown business owners about the downtown organizational structure, which they can do in groups over these conference calls. Interested committee members signed up. They will also send out an email to the business owners who weren’t present to invite them to participate.

Incidentally, mark your calendars for a DREAM Kickoff meeting on June 2 in the Annex. There will be no KDIC meeting in July.

After KDIC, I hustled over to Village 76, a senior living community, for a presentation on the Missouri Senior Report. I learned that Missouri is the only state in the nation doing an annual report on the status of seniors in the state, so we have really set a gold standard that other states are modeling. The report is a collaborative effort between the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and the University of Missouri Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis, and two representatives from these agencies gave the presentation. Nine Kirksville residents, representing a terrific cross-section of senior services and interests in the community, were present.

The results are too much to rehash here in detail, but I walked away with a couple strong impressions. First, Adair County is ranked #3 in the State on senior access to healthcare. Yet, puzzlingly, on overall health of the senior population, we rank #75, with a 50% increase in “health status” according to their indicators. Several of us suggested that mental health statistics were a potential missing piece to the puzzle. They stressed that Missouri will have to deal with a rapidly aging Baby Boomer population, estimating that 1 in every 5 Missourians will be 65 or older by 2020.

But with all this talk about senior issues, let’s not forget how much seniors contribute to our community. They are a strong volunteer force and fill many of our government positions. A large percentage of the wealth in Northeast Missouri is concentrated in our senior population, and they are our biggest savers. They also have a strong economic impact, as they bring in outside money (with Social Security, pensions, etc) and tend to spend it more locally than the rest of us. We owe a lot of the success in our community to their contributions.

The entire report is available at www.missouriseniorreport.org.

Three alternatives with maps & explanation (Gould, Evans, Goodman Associates)

I am neither in favor of nor against the awnings coming down; I believe we need to forget about the awnings for the moment and get all parties back to the table to decide TOGETHER how to proceed with downtown renovation.

Pardon the pun, but the awnings are shading the REAL issue here – which is that the City Council, the downtown business owners, and the Downtown Improvement Committee are all in disagreement about how to proceed with the downtown improvement guidelines as they are currently written. We need at least three things for successful downtown renovation:

1) We need a clearly identified goal and a fully researched, comprehensive plan to get us there. I’m hoping the DREAM initiative will guide this process.

2) All affected parties – the city, the downtown business owners, the downtown TIFF Commission, the Downtown Improvement Committee, and the citizens of Kirksville – need to believe in, invest in, and promote this plan. All parties need to be involved in every step of the process so there is 100% buy-in.

3) All parties need to work together to execute this plan, keeping lines of communication and goodwill open.

A few naysayers have told me this will never happen – that “you can never get people to agree on anything.” Well, I don’t believe that. With the right attitude, the right leadership, and clear communication throughout, it can and will happen. If the citizens of LaPlata can rally around a dream, so can we.