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There is so much development taking place in our neighborhood that it is difficult to keep track of it. I thought it would be nice to have one source where people could go and see the development that has taken place in the past few years as well as new development that is in the review/approval pipeline.
With this in mind, I download all of the minutes of the Historic Preservation Board beginning in the year 1999 and extracted all new development that the Board has approved. My definition of new development includes new structures being built and single family houses being converted to multi-family homes. It does not include other alterations to existing structures. Minutes of the Historic Preservation Board prior to 1999 were not available. With the assistance of Charles Carrozza and David Parker, we visited each site and took pictures. This information was assembled and this new feature was added to this website. Please let us know if you find this information useful. We plan to keep it updated along with new pictures as they become available. If you notice errors or omission, please let us know. If anyone has pictures of what these sites looked like before development, share them with us and we'll include them.
In doing this project, I reflected on what many of these sites looked like before and I must say that, in my opinion, the new development has upgraded our neighborhood. It's a step up despite the fact that most of the new development is not compatible with our historic character. To blame the developers for this shortcoming would not be fair. The failure lies with our City Commission, the Historic Preservation Board, and to some extent or Civic Association for not developing standards for historic compatibility. Recent events has brought this issue to the forefront and maybe soon developers will have a better understanding of our expectations.
This development brings with it a lot of new people to our neighborhood with talent and fresh ideas. We welcome them and seek their help and involvement in the activities of our community.
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