Public hearing to be held today to discuss Cape Girardeau's historic district design guidelines

Carefully crafted rules for Cape Girardeau's first residential historic district will be the subject of a public hearing today.

But the guidelines, assembled over 14 months, received an extreme makeover by city officials.

Mike Sheehan, a former member of the city's historic preservation commission and a member of the committee that drafted the guidelines, said he was surprised at many of the 48 changes made to the 12-page document.

"We don't have any internal problems. The neighbors do a pretty good job of keeping up their property," he said. But Sheehan worries about what he calls "external problems" — the effects of non-resident private and commercial investors from absent landlords to Southeast Missouri State University and Southeast Missouri Hospital, as well as the city.

"We're trying to preserve our neighborhood," he said.

The Boulevard Local Historic District, the first of its kind in the city, is a primarily residential area encompassed by the district is north of Broadway, east of North West End Boulevard, west of North Henderson Avenue, the 300 block of North Park Avenue and all of Highland, Hillcrest and Rockwood drives.

Mike Sheehan, who lives in the neighborhood, helped start the local historic district designation process. His West End Boulevard home was built in 1927, but others in the area date back to 1914.

He said the committee that developed the design guidelines wanted to tailor the rules to the neighborhood. Rules were drawn from committee suggestions as well as national historic preservation documents and the city's ordinances.

"You tailor a document for the specific needs, instead of doing a boilerplate with a cookie-cutter type of approach," Sheehan said.

The original design guidelines include a suggestion to limit the number of people in a single residential home to two surnames as well as limits for parking — residents and their guests would have city issued permits. The parking rule is intended to address the amount of cars parked along the proposed district's streets by students attending Southeast Missouri State University.

"This area is from the early 1900s," Sheehan said. "From the purposes of historic presentation, it ruins the experience when you see cars throughout this area."

The original draft of the rules include a provision to review and change the guidelines one year after they are adopted, with an option to update them every other year beyond that.

Sheehan said all the rules are appropriate under the umbrella of rezoning, because if approved, the zoning designation would be changed, adding an H to existing zone codes currently applied in the district.

But Eric Cunningham, the city attorney, said the new rules are intended to specifically address design and architecture issues, not code changes that would require police or other city enforcement. He said the historic designation is a zoning overlay, not a rezoning. For this reason, he said, rules relating to parking and other enforceable issues were eliminated from the guidelines.

If the commission OKs the guidelines, the rules will go before city council for approval.

Current members of the city of Cape Girardeau Historic Preservation Commission are Bill Eddleman (chairman), Steve Pledger, Patti House, Jim Blakemore, Donna Grantham, Scott House, Ed Kaiser, Sharon Giebler, Richard "Dick Kent" Withers and honorary member Felix Kinsley. The board meets at 7 p.m. today at city hall, 401 Independence St.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646