Historic Preservation Helping The Local Economy

Historic Preservation advocates say creating historic districts helps boost the local economy.

Distrcits help boost the local economy.

The lafayette historic preservation commission points to downtown lafayette as an example.

At the heart of downtown near main and 6th street..

Several shops and resturants are occupying the historic buildings.

Above those businesses is more space some of which house apartments..

Which are in high demand and nearly always leased out.

Vice president sean lutz says historic buildings draw people to the community.

"historic districts raise property values..

They draw in tourism and areas like this have what we call place making there is something unique about this area that draws people in they want to do business here they want to live here."

Lutz says one of the challenging things about historic districts is the misconceptions surrounding them.

He says historic districts allow all changes to the interior of a building.

He says it's only major exterior changes... new construction..

Or and demolition that is affected by an area being historic district.

Even then 97-100 percent of projects are approved by the historic preservation commission.

Major