The
Use of Historic Preservation in the Redevelopment of Railroad Legacy
Properties
– Presented
at the Railroad Environmental Conference, October 2006, University
of Illinois, Urbana, IL
This
research examines the use of historic preservation as a means to
spur the redevelopment of railroad legacy sites. Typically, facility
closure has been closely followed by the removal of all existing
buildings and structures. While this approach has helped to facilitate
new construction in some cases, it has also created thousands of
vacant clean-up sites that are bypassed by developers in favor of
greenfield sites. Historic preservation can make these locations
attractive through combining the rehabilitation of well-constructed,
visually distinctive buildings with government incentives for both
brownfield redevelopment and historic preservation. This approach
has been applied to legacy sites in Kansas City, San Francisco and
Parkersburg, West Virginia. Several additional projects are currently
in the planning stages. This paper builds on research gathered while
creating an online tool kit that examines this topic in the context
of the current legal and policy treatment of liability issues and
remediation strategies. The paper also considers perceptions of
developers, property owners and the general public.
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