2013-12-00-CPC-rpt (Needs Assessment Report)

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NEEDS AND GOALS The goals for historic preservation in Lexington are embodied in the criteria for evaluation of potential CPA projects. The CPC seeks projects that: • Protect, preserve, enhance, restore and/or rehabilitate historic, cultural, architectural or archaeological resources of significance, especially those that are threatened; • Protect, preserve, enhance, restore and/or rehabilitate Town -owned properties, features or resources of historical significance; • Protect, preserve, enhance, restore and/or rehabilitate the historical function of a property or site; • Support the adaptive reuse of historic properties; • Affect a site within a Lexington Historic District, on a State or National Historic Register, or eligible for placement on such registers, or on the Lexington Historical Commission's Cultural Resources Inventory; • Demonstrate a specific public benefit; and/or • Provide permanent protection for maintaining a historic resource. RECOMMENDATIONS These goals can be addressed, first, through the comprehensive identification of the historic resources that are at risk in Lexington due to lack of funding, insensitive alterations or deferred maintenance, or other lack of stewardship. Second, the Town needs to provide the incentives to promote successful and sensitive rehabilitation/restoration projects, in compliance with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation (Department of Interior Regualtions, 36 CFR 67) and the adaptive reuse of historic buildings that have outlived their original purposes. Third, Lexington should be aware of the full complement of preservation techniques available to us, including the creation of conservation overlay districts to protect areas where the substantial oversight and control of a historic district is not warranted or feasible, and the purchase of preservation easements from owners of historic houses that would equalize their economic value so that they could be sold as houses and not teardown opportunities. Special attention should be paid to threatened classes of resources, such as Mid -Century Modernist homes, post -World War II buildings and historic schools. Specific projects might include the following: • Acquisition of historic properties — buildings, landscapes, sites, structures or preservation easements. CPA funds could help bridge the economic gap to make possible the acquisition and adaptation of older, historic homes for affordable housing or assisted living as an alternative to teardown and redevelopment. Lexington CPA funding contributed to the acquisition and reuse of the M. H. Merriam and Co. Building on 13