[MassHistPres] Special treatment for Single House Local Historic Districts?

[Skelly, Christopher (SEC)]

Chris, under the state local historic district act, single building local historic districts are treated the same as multi property districts.

A single building local historic district still requires the submittal of a preliminary study report to the Massachusetts Historical Commission, a public hearing, a 2/3s affirmative vote of town meeting/city council and recording the map at the registry of deeds.

To clarify, you don't need "approval" for any local historic district from the Massachusetts Historical Commission.  Local historic districts are approved by the local legislative body, town meeting or city council.

The requirement under the state law is that the preliminary study report must be submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission.  Our recommendations back to the local committee/commission are advisory.

I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.  Do you have a copy of our guidebook, Establishing Local Historic Districts?  We have had quite a few single building local historic districts study reports submitted to our office the past few years.  Chris.

Christopher C. Skelly
Director of Local Government Programs
Massachusetts Historical Commission
Christopher.Skelly at state.ma.us<mailto:Christopher.Skelly at state.ma.us>

________________________________
From: masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu [masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu] on behalf of Christopher Bader [cb at kratylos.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2016 3:01 PM
To: masshistpres Members
Subject: [MassHistPres] Special treatment for Single House Local Historic Districts?

All,

I have encountered some differing opinions about the treatment of Single House Local Historic Districts and whether they go through exactly the same formation process as bigger districts.

Specifically, I have been told that they don't need approval from the Mass. Historical Commission but can simply be created by the City Council.  I don't think this is true, but I want to hear it from someone knowledgeable about this.

Chris Bader
Chair
Medford Historic District Commission
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