Spurred by a developer’s request, Webb City, Mo., will seek a historic district designation for its downtown area, which includes Route 66, reported the Joplin Globe.
Tom Hamsher, who is renovating the Minerva Candy Co. building at 12 S. Main St., suggested the city seek the federal designation for its downtown. That idea is viewed favorably by the mayor and the city’s economic development director.
The Globe reported:
If a section of the city’s downtown were to be added to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district, property owners would be eligible for tax incentives and other forms of preservation assistance.
“If I’m going to buy another building, or anyone else is with the intention to remodel like us, it would certainly benefit all of us and promote more work downtown if we can get this designation,” Hamsher said. […]
The proposed district in Webb City includes six blocks of Main Street and six blocks on Broadway Street. It makes several jogs, but its northernmost boundary is East Austin Street and its southernmost boundary is West Third Street. It also extends along East Daugherty Street. Its westernmost boundary is North Liberty Street, and its easternmost boundary is along Walker Avenue.
The area includes the Middle West Hotel, 1 S. Main St., formerly known as the Grand Opera House and Webb City Opera House. Built in 1883, it was one of the city’s first downtown, commercial brick buildings. It was listed on the National Registry in 1982.
It also includes a bit of historic Route 66, the Route 66 Welcome Center and Minerva Candy Co., among others.
Hamsher says if the tax credits existed, he would look into renovating other historic buildings in Webb City’s downtown.
A nearby example of a town with historic districts is Carthage, which has four. The fellow Route 66 city boasts about 600 buildings within those districts. One developer in Carthage told the Globe that tax credits within a district can pay “15 to 40 percent” of renovation costs.
Regarding Carthage and it’s four individual preservation zones, it is interesting to note that the 1939 Boots Motel is not in any of those zones.
Perhaps there are no other properties at the “Crossroads of America” that are worthy, including the Boots Drive-in (now a bank, the Dazy Courts Motel and Whistler’s Hamburger Stand. This is why the historic motel was at such great risk of being leveled… a $50. permit being the only requirement.
Placement on the National Register cannot happen for the Boots Motel until the old pitched roof is removed, thus restoring it’s original appearance, and while a $12,000 matching grant from the NPS has been awarded, the clock is ticking and the owners must come-up with the other half or risk losing the grant. The catch-22 here is that once removed, the flat roof underneath will need to be replaced costing many thousands more, and there is no grant for that.
Despite the huge investment already made to restore this historic property, without grants, donations and volunteer participation, the Boots Motel (and other endangered properties along the Route) are far from being truly “saved”.
Sadly, even if a property were on the National Register, that offers no protection in and of itself. Coral Court Motel (Marlborough-St. Louis MO) and Aztec Motel (Albuquerque NM) are both listed there, for what little that’s worth.
What CarlB commented is true…placement on the National Register does not “protect” that property from being sold, razed or modified at a later date. What it does accomplish is to make that property more likely to receive federal (and other) grants to help with it’s restoration, and may also encourage the local community to place it into a designated historic preservation zone where it would receive additional protections from an unexpected purchase and overnight demolition effort.