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🏛️ Historic District Plans: DeFuniak Springs is reviewing draft preservation guides for its three historic districts with input from consultants and the public.
📚 Council Feedback: Concerns over document length, duplication, and restrictive language dominated council discussions.
🗣️ Community Engagement: Residents gave feedback at a public workshop, with discussions about preserving status and refining document language.
Historical preservation remains a key focus for the future of DeFuniak Springs – if local organizations vectors of interest are any indication.
This past week, several meetings were held to mark the continued progress that is taking place regarding the City’s three neighborhood historical districts.
Executive Director of the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), Joshua Ervin led a presentation for the City Council that provided a “first draft” of the Historical Redevelopment Plan for the City’s historical districts.
Ervin welcomed Samantha Smith, Architectural Historian for Johnson, Mimiran & Thompson (JMT) to present an overview of the ‘first draft’ of the Historic Preservation Design Standards Guidebook.
JMT, an engineering consulting firm, with experience in community historic preservation, was hired by the City to assist CRA with guidance for the preservation and enhancement of the architectural history of three landmark and historical neighborhoods.
Smith told the Council that the three guides created (each specific to the neighborhood being represented) are in “draft form” and that CRA and JMT were seeking City Council and community feedback for needed revisions so that the final document will be “tailored to the community.”
The consultants supporting DeFuniak Springs are from the Cultural Resources division of the JMT engineering firm. They focus on “a combination of architectural history, historic preservation, archaeology, public history, and public transportation…the staff are qualified for the positions they hold as outlined in the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standard.” JMT has also supported historic preservation projects in Titusville and Tarpon Springs, FL.
Within DeFuniak Springs, there are three designated historic districts:
The first two districts are primarily residential districts, and the Business District is a blend of commercial and residential historical construction. The primary objective of each historic district in the City is to help preserve and enhance architectural character.
There are residents in National Historic Districts who may not be familiar with the added benefits of having this designation in your City. There is documented support for reasons a municipality would want to have a Historic Preservation District. A few reasons include increased job opportunities, higher property values, the draw of tourists to heritage locations, and the well-known “downtown revitalization.”
Smith shared the ‘basic design standards’ of the whole exterior façade for historic homes and the types of architecture that are most commonly recognized in our area. She elaborated on the unique fingerprint of DeFuniak Springs and “the significance of the Chautauqua history.” Her presentation (based on the JML draft) included a large number of visual renderings that she believes are very helpful for visual learners.
City Councilman Todd Bierbaum (Seat 1), offered feedback to the presentation provided by JTM. Bierbaum asked presenters and CRA Director Ervin if the presentation had been presented to the Planning Board or the Code Review and Land Use Committee.
Ervin said that it hadn’t – but it could be presented to those bodies.
Bierbaum also inquired about efforts to contact Main Street, a nationally accredited nonprofit focused on revitalizing DeFuniak Springs’ historic downtown area. Ervin acknowledged that a meeting was scheduled with the organization the next day.
Mr. Bierbaum held up the copies of all three proposed draft documents and said the (entire) document is 509 pages of codes – “telling people what they can and can’t do with their property.” He told the meeting he was concerned about overrreached and private property rights.
“I hate to do this in a public meeting like this, but unfortunately the way this is all scheduled out, this is kind of one of my only opportunities to put things on the record,” Bierbaum said.
Councilman Bierbaum focused his first concerns on the ‘amount of duplication’ found between the three documents (one provided for each of the districts.) He continued, “This [meaning the Design Standards document] could easily be reduced down by 90 percent to probably 50 pages or less. There are also just very basic errors in this document – or in these documents.”
The Councilman also spoke about the content or voice of the documentation including the wording used in the document, such as, “Shall be” or “Shall not be,” that is concerning to the Councilman. Bierbaum added, “There are a lot of handcuffs placed on our property owners on what they can and cannot do.”
Ervin said the CRA intended to get feedback from the City Council before meeting with the community.
Councilman Bierbaum concluded, “I believe what this document should do is to layout the groundwork for ‘Here’s what is in our districts. Here’s what you can build – it looks like this… Look to your left. Look to your right… As for the Code Review and Land Use Committee, we have openly discussed this about doing the ‘form-based code.’ And to me, this should reflect that. This should reflect all the discussions we’ve had over the past two years about form-based code because that is where we were driving [sic] before this popped up.”
Mayor, Bob Campbell, invited the presenters to respond to the comments made. Mr. Ervin told the council his goal was to provide information and obtain feedback and then determine the best steps forward and ways to improve the document so it could become a tool for DeFuniak Springs Historic Preservation. In his comments, Mr. Ervin stated that the efforts made by JMT aimed to provide a document that would be “well received by the public.” The team from JMT who have worked with historic preservation in other parts of Florida and throughout the eastern United States have found that the “illustrative approach” [including visuals, diagrams and flowcharts] help to make the document “more objective.” But most importantly, Mr. Ervin reiterated that the document presented is in ‘draft form’ and is absolutely subject to change as needed.
Community Workshop on the Draft Document of Historic Preservation for DeFuniak Springs
The following evening (June 24), a Community Workshop was held at the Chautauqua Hall of Brotherhood in the Historic District. This meeting was attended by approximately twenty residents.
The presentation was a bit more detailed than the presentation made to the City Council the prior evening.
At the meeting with the community, Ervin indicated that the terminology within the ‘draft document’ is subject to change to ensure consistency with the intent of building the community and supporting the intended goal. Instead of using ‘terms for permissible changes‘ to buildings including: “Appropriate, May Be Appropriate, or Not Acceptable, – the potential terminology suggested may be: “Desireable, Less Desireable or Least Desireable.”
Ervin also explained to residents that the historic district designation could be lost – should design standards loosen and the district go below a critical mass of historic buildings in the area.
Dr. Melinda Henderson, a long time resident of DeFuniak Springs, serves as Executive Director of Forward DeFuniak and told Mid Bay News that her late husband was a sixth-generation native of DeFuniak Springs.
She has grandchildren who live in the City and volunteers at a Defuniak Springs church.
She believes that DeFuniak Springs’ status as a part of the National Historic Preservation Register helps the city.
She shared that the Registry designation supports tourism coming into the local community and certainly helps to enhance property values for district homeowners.
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