Jackson drafting a historic preservation ordinance

Jackson city officials continue to move toward establishing the city’s first historical preservation ordinance in hopes of maintaining the look of important buildings uptown and elsewhere.

“We’re going through the process now of understanding what we should include in an ordinance,” said Jackson Mayor Dwain Hahs. “Without speaking for [the rest of the board of aldermen], they are favorable to the idea of having an ordinance.”

Jackson building and planning superintendent Janet Sanders said the ordinance remains in its early stages but is taking shape.

“The point of it is to help protect some of the historic features of our historic buildings,” she said.

She likened the ideal ordinance to the way covenants work in a residential subdivision, in that before any radical exterior change can be made to a designated property, the change would have to be approved by a historical-preservation board.

The ordinance, she said, would only apply to elements visible from the outside. Inside elements would be up to the property owners.

“Property owners would be able to nominate their property through the commission to see if it has the significance to be designated a landmark,” she said.

Sanders said historic buildings already are an integral part of Jackson’s cultural identity.

The area encompassed between Court, Main, Missouri and High streets in uptown Jackson, as well as a few other sites, already have designations on the National Register of Historic Places.

“But being on the national register doesn’t protect any of those properties,” Sanders said.

A preservation ordinance represents the next step in that direction.

She cited a building at 131 W. Main St. that houses Gaming Grounds as an example of what the ordinance would ideally promote: a functioning business on the inside, but with an exterior that maintains the “uptown Jackson” look.

Sites would not necessarily have to be in uptown to qualify under the ordinance, nor would they have to be buildings. She cited Jackson’s Native American thong tree as a property that would be eligible.

Hahs said the board likely would require a few more meetings to hammer out a draft of the ordinance before holding a town-hall meeting sometime in October.

In the meantime, he encouraged citizens to share their input with city hall.

“We’re hoping to hear from citizens and certainly any property owners who would fall within the ordinance,” Hahs said.

The Cape Girardeau County administration building, Sanders said, used to be the Coca-Cola bottling plant, but that has been largely forgotten since the building’s exterior was changed.

“We just don’t want to lose everything that we have now,” she said. “Turn-of-the-century-type buildings ... they don’t make new ones. That’s the character of Jackson.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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