CITY AWAITS CLEARANCE FOR GRANT

History could be holding up progress on a grant to renovate substandard housing in Cape Girardeau.

City officials are waiting for clearance from the state's historic preservation office before funding on the Jefferson-Shawnee Parkway Neighborhood Improvement Project can be released.

The city was awarded the $446,500 grant in April 1997.

Steve Williams, the city's housing assistance director, said the state routinely reviews properties within a grant area to determine whether any historically significant properties will be impacted by the work.

The state has completed its review, Williams said. Now the state and the city are trying to work out a blanket agreement to cover the details of how renovations on houses deemed historically significant can be carried out, he said.

"What we're trying to do is work out an agreement we can all live with," Williams said.

The delay on the Jefferson-Shawnee Park project has been unusually long. But working out a single blanket agreement will mean the city won't have to get clearance for work on individual homes.

Normally, the process would take about 30 days, said Claire Blackwell, director of the state's historic preservation office.

The state tries to determine if a structure is architecturally significant, or whether it is related to a particular person or event significant to the community's history, she said.

"If it's a building, a building should have some integrity," Blackwell said. "It should still reflect some of the character of its historic significance."

She said there have been "a lot of lags" in communications between her office and the city.

Blackwell also said the city has resisted its suggestions on how renovations should be carried out.

"I really think that we've tried to assist the city in meeting its compliance responsibility for this project, and the city has chosen not to accept our recommendations on several occasions, and that has resulted in slowing up the process," she said. "We certainly want to make sure the project moves forward.'

Blackwell said she wasn't familiar with the details of the agreement in the works with the city, and couldn't comment on it.

The delay in releasing funds hasn't completely stalled the project.

Wednesday night, master gardeners from the University of Missouri Outreach and Extension worked with homeowners in the project area on gardening and landscaping.

"Once we complete a project area, we want to keep it looking nice," Williams said.

Toward that end, the city offers educational programs like Wednesday night's workshop to teach property owners how to properly maintain their homes.

The block grants are aimed at making substandard homes livable by adding such things as vinyl siding, energy-efficient windows, new furnaces and new roofs.

But sometimes the goals of the block grant program conflict with historic preservation efforts, and a compromise has to be reached between protecting sites that are historic and upgrading homes that are just old and in need of repair.

The city sends the state photos of the homes within a project area, Williams said, but those photos don't always show the details and extent of repair work needed.

"If we don't do certain things, that house will no longer be there," he said. "Getting these folks to understand that is not always easy."

Sometimes the details of the renovations -- especially putting up vinyl siding or thermal windows -- hold up releasing the funds, Williams said.

"That's our biggest sticking point, the type of siding you put in there, and the types of windows," he said. "There's not going to be much structural change on the outside."

Since 1982, the city of Cape Girardeau has received $3.8 million in community development block grant funding for neighborhood rehabilitation.

The city pays for infrastructure improvements with grant project areas as its matching share of the grant funds.