River Forest village board wants to survey every property for historic significance

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 10:00 PM

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Print

By Devin Rose

Staff Reporter

With money set aside in next fiscal year's budget, the Historic Preservation Commission in River Forest will use the results of a village-wide survey to establish criteria for preserving properties in the village.

Monday night, the village board agreed to set aside $12,000 for a consulting firm, The Lakota Group, to survey each property in the village beginning after May 1, the start of the next fiscal year. The village's historic preservation ordinance requires the commission to maintain and update a register of significant structures.

Tom Zurowski, a member of the commission, said the board had asked the commission last May to identify what makes certain properties significant. The Lakota Group wants to use the survey to determine specific criteria about whether a building is worthy of preservation, and tol re-evaluate the boundaries of the current historic district.

The group is recommending the village use evaluation criteria from the National Register, which Zurowski said is logical. According to that criteria, significant properties could be those that have yielded information important to history, are associated with significant people or embody distinctive characteristics of a certain construction period.

According to a proposal by the consultants, there are 3,153 properties in the village. Consultants will conduct more intensive surveys for the 220 properties they deem significant structures.

The Lakota Group set the total project cost at about $48,000, and the commission requested that the remaining money be taken from funds raised to repair the Cummins Memorial at Lake Street and Harlem Avenue. That restoration was a project championed by a committee organizing activities for the village's 125th anniversary in 2005.

No money was used for the Cummins Memorial because rehabilitation would have cost more than $800,000, but Village President John Rigas said people keep asking what will happen to the money in the fund.

Another committee created in 2006 had no recommendations for what to do with the money, and the board decided Monday to talk to some former members and make sure there are no objections to using it for the survey.

In considering consulting firms to work with, the Lakota Group stood out for its use of technology and its ability to engage the community during the survey, he said.

The community will have access to an online database when the project is complete, Zurowski said.