In 1959, Clara Miles set out to create a neighborhood for Black families in Columbia. Today, the Miles Manor Subdivision is one of the areas that the city’s Historic Preservation Plan recommends be a registered historic district.
The plan is a roadmap for preserving local historical landmarks. Its purpose is to help the city and property owners identify, recognize and maintain local historical landmarks.
The Historic Preservation Commission oversees historic preservation in the city. Russell Palmer is the group’s city liaison.
“The preservation plan will give us kind of a more specific roadmap for what the (commission) should focus on moving forward,” Palmer said.
The plan is still in its early stages, with a final draft due in late Spring. The city has already held a public forum and solicited public input. It contracted consultant David Taylor to write the plan; he’s been doing preservation work for more than 30 years.
“I think the city has been very vigilant,” Taylor said. “They've been dedicated to advocating and affecting preservation in Columbia. But this was just kind of a process to put on paper, sort of a set of guidelines and guideposts for their future activity.”
Taylor believes there have been some misconceptions about what impact the document will have – specifically, whether it will make restoring older buildings more difficult by forcing rules about procedures or materials that must be used to make buildings period-accurate.
“There's nothing in the legislation in Columbia that forces anybody to do anything,” he said. “It does no property rights restrictions or anything like that. It's just simply a recognition.”
Taylor said there’s a lot to recognize.
“Columbia has a rich heritage,” he said. “It's an educational center. It's become a medical center. It's got wonderful neighborhoods. It's got a vibrant downtown, and it's got a whole series of dozens and hundreds of historic properties all through the community.”
The effort is funded, in part, by a grant from Missouri’s State Historic Preservation Office, which is funded through the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund. The city’s project has a total cost of $25,000, with 60% of that eligible for reimbursement.
Palmer said with revisions and votes of approval, the plan will take the better part of this year before being fully implemented.
“There's still going to be a lot of opportunity for input moving forward throughout the summer and into the fall,” he said.
The public can view and leave comments on the latest version of the plan online at beheard.como.gov.
