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HISTORIC PRESERVATION VS. KATRINA: WHAT

ROLE SHOULD FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL

GOVERNMENTS PLAY IN PRESERVING HISTORIC

PROPERTIES AFFECTED BY THIS CATASTROPHIC STORM?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM

AND THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 1, 2005

Serial No. 109–110

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JOHN CUADERES, Staff Director

JON HEROUX, Counsel

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on November 1, 2005 ........................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Holmes, H.T., director, Mississippi Department of Archives and History;

Mitchell J. Landrieu, Lieutenant Governor, State of Louisiana; Derrick

Evans, founder/director, Turkey Creek Community Initiatives; Patricia

H. Gay, executive director, Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans; and David Preziosi, executive director, the Mississippi Heritage

Trust .............................................................................................................. 4

Evans, Derrick ........................................................................................... 31

Gay, Patricia H. ......................................................................................... 36

Holmes, H.T. .............................................................................................. 4

Landrieu, Mitchell J. ................................................................................. 18

Preziosi, David ........................................................................................... 59

Nau, John L., III, chairman, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation;

Janet Matthews, associate director for cultural resources, National

Park Service; Richard Moe, president, the National Trust for Historic

Preservation; and Norman L. Koonce, executive vice president and

CEO, the American Institute of Architects ................................................. 88

Koonce, Norman L. .................................................................................... 113

Matthews, Janet ........................................................................................ 97

Moe, Richard .............................................................................................. 106

Nau, John L., III ....................................................................................... 88

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Dent, Hon. Charles W., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of ...................................................... 79

Evans, Derrick, founder/director, Turkey Creek Community Initiatives,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 33

Gay, Patricia H., executive director, Preservation Resource Center of

New Orleans, prepared statement of .......................................................... 38

Holmes, H.T., director, Mississippi Department of Archives and History,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 6

Koonce, Norman L., executive vice president and CEO, the American

Institute of Architects, prepared statement of ........................................... 115

Landrieu, Mitchell J., Lieutenant Governor, State of Louisiana, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 21

Matthews, Janet, associate director for cultural resources, National Park

Service, prepared statement of .................................................................... 99

Moe, Richard, president, the National Trust for Historic Preservation,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 108

Nau, John L., III, chairman, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 91

Preziosi, David, executive director, the Mississippi Heritage Trust, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 61

(1)

HISTORIC PRESERVATION VS. KATRINA:

WHAT ROLE SHOULD FEDERAL, STATE AND

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS PLAY IN PRESERVING HISTORIC PROPERTIES AFFECTED BY

THIS CATASTROPHIC STORM?

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Turner, Dent, and Foxx.

Also present: Representative Melancon.

Staff present: John Cuaderes, staff director; Jon Heroux, counsel;

Peter Neville, fellow; Juliana French, clerk; Adam Bordes, minority

professional staff member; and Cecelia Morton, minority office

manager.

Mr. TURNER. Good morning. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census will come

to order.

Welcome to the subcommittee’s hearing entitled, ‘‘Historic Preservation vs. Katrina: What Role Should Federal, State and Local

Governments Play in Historic Preservation Properties Affected by

this Catastrophic Storm?’’

As we all know, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf coast

on August 29, 2005, heavily damaging the entire region. The storm

will be the costliest in U.S. history, and maybe the greatest natural

disaster ever to hit our Nation. The first priority, of course, is rebuilding the lives, communities, and businesses impacted by the

storm. Nonetheless, historic preservation should be part of our response, both as an economic revitalization tool and to save our historic legacy.

From a historical perspective, the gulf coast region is one that is

abundant in national treasures. For example, it is the site of numerous ancient Native American mounds and structures, it is the

site of many remnants of the Nation’s colonial roots. It is a memory

of a time when Louis XIV first determined that the French should

have a stake in the new world. It is an example of the former glory

of Spain, and it is rich in African American history and culture. It

is the birthplace of jazz and Mississippi Delta blues. It is a place

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of tradition and beauty. It is nothing less than a showcase of not

only our national, but of world history.

The destruction of historic properties has been massive. The

numbers are staggering because the gulf coast region has one of

the Nation’s highest concentrations of historic structures. Historically important properties can be found throughout the hurricaneimpacted area, and thousands of them are at risk of being lost forever.

Federal, State and local governments, as well as the nongovernmental associations, need to coordinate a timely, sufficient, targeted response to this historic preservation disaster. Time is an

issue. Historically important structures have already been torn

down, and structures that can be saved must be stabilized before

they too are lost forever. There is hope. The infrastructure needed

to implement historic rehabilitation programs is already in place.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created a strong

Federal preservation program which is administered by the Department of the Interior. This program relies heavily on the State

Historic Preservation Offices and their local partners.

Even though the National Historic Preservation Act has a builtin infrastructure to deal with saving our historical structures, Hurricane Katrina was so massive and widespread that we need to explore additional ways to ensure that historic preservation is a priority. A coalition of national preservation organizations, led by the

National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects, have proposed a legislative package for preservation efforts in the disaster area. The package proposed using the

existing structure to provide new grants, tax credits, and waivers

as incentives to restoring historic properties damaged by the hurricane.

Today’s hearing will explore the roles of the Federal, State and

local governments in responding to Katrina, the legislative package

proposed by the National Trust and the American Institute of Architects, and other recommendations.

To help us address these issues, we have nine distinguished witnesses on two panels. On the first panel we will begin by hearing

from the Honorable Mitchell Landrieu, the Lieutenant Governor of

Louisiana, who I understand is going to be late today, will share

his State-level perspective, and we will recognize him when he

joins us. We will then hear from Mr. H.T. Holmes, director of the

Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which has responsibility for Mississippi historic properties.

We will next hear from Derrick Evans, founder and director of

the Turkey Creek Community Initiative in Mississippi, recognized

in 2001 as 1 of Mississippi’s 10 most endangered historical places.

The Turkey Creek Estuary was settled after the Civil War by African-American freed men. Mr. Evans has been working to protect

the historic Turkey Creek area from urban sprawl, and is now

working to recover from Katrina.

We will then hear from Patricia Gay, Executive Director of the

Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. Prior to Hurricane

Katrina, Ms. Gay focused her work on revitalizing New Orleans

historic neighborhoods, and now her challenge has taken a new

course.

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We will then hear from Mr. David Preziosi, executive director of

the Mississippi Heritage Trust, where we will learn of his efforts

of assessing the damage to historic properties in Mississippi.

On the second panel we have four distinguished witnesses. First

we will hear from John Nau, chairman of the Advisory Council on

Historic Preservation, which advises the President and Congress on

national historic preservation policy.

We will then hear from Dr. Janet Matthews, Associate Director

for Cultural Resources at the National Park Service which administers the Federal Historic Preservation program.

Then we will hear from Richard Moe, president of the National

Trust for Historic Preservation, who will address their efforts in

the Katrina response in the proposed legislative package.

And finally, we will hear from Norman Koonce, executive vice

president and CEO of the American Institute of Architects, who

will tell us of their response efforts and the legislative package

they have proposed.

I look forward to the expert testimony on our distinguished panel

of leaders and what they will provide us today, and I want to thank

each of you for your time and welcome you.

I will now recognize Virginia Foxx and appreciate your attendance today.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m looking forward to

hearing the comments here.

My husband and I have been involved a little bit in some historic

preservation, although we don’t talk about it a lot, and love to see

older buildings and facilities preserved and enhanced. And so I look

forward to hearing the comments today and thank all these folks

for being here today.

Mr. TURNER. We will now hear from the witnesses. Each witness

has kindly prepared written testimony which will be included in

the record of this hearing. Witnesses will notice that there is a

timer light at the witness table. The green light indicates that you

should begin your prepared remarks, and the red light indicates

that time has expired. The yellow light will indicate that you have

1 minute left in which to conclude your remarks.

It is the policy of this committee that all witnesses be sworn in

before they testify. If all witnesses would please rise and raise your

right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Let the record show that all witnesses have responded in the affirmative.

And we will begin with Mr. Holmes. If you will turn on your mic,

there is a button at the bottom. And again, we will begin with 5-

minute rounds of comments. So if you will summarize your written

testimony, and then subsequent to the presentation of your testimony we will enter into a round of questions from the Members.

Mr Holmes.

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STATEMENTS OF H.T. HOLMES, DIRECTOR, MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; MITCHELL J.

LANDRIEU, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, STATE OF LOUISIANA;

DERRICK EVANS, FOUNDER/DIRECTOR, TURKEY CREEK

COMMUNITY INITIATIVES; PATRICIA H. GAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PRESERVATION RESOURCE CENTER OF NEW ORLEANS; AND DAVID PREZIOSI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE

MISSISSIPPI HERITAGE TRUST

STATEMENT OF H.T. HOLMES

Mr. HOLMES. Chairman Turner, distinguished members of the

subcommittee, I am H.T. Holmes, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and, as such, serve as both the

State historic preservation officer and the State historical records

coordinator for——

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Holmes, if I could have you pause for a moment; and for each of you, these mics are relatively directional. If

you would take your mic and turn the top of it down so that it is

pointed directly at you, great.

Mr. HOLMES. Hurricane Katrina dealt a deadly blow to more

than 300 buildings in Mississippi that are listed in the National

Register of Historic Places. Our current assessment count indicates

that at least 1,000 properties were severely damaged, including

Beauvoir, the National Historic Landmark home of Jefferson Davis.

Unlike Beauvoir, many of these 1,000 properties are beyond repair

and will be lost. Many of the region’s public spaces, museums, libraries, archives, city halls and courthouses were hit hard.

In the days immediately following the storm, the staff of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History mobilized an all-forsalvage-and-recovery support. Teams of archivists, museum curators, and historic preservation specialists daily drove 6 to 8 hours

round trip, 7 days a week, to devote 8 to 10 hours in damaged

buildings assessment and to salvage artifacts and documents from

flooded museums, libraries, and courthouses.

I am very proud of the Department’s response effort, which continues even as we speak. And I am deeply grateful for the assistance offered by government agencies such as the National Historical Publication and Records Commission, and private organizations

such as the National Trust Historic Preservation.

What we have learned is that for publicly owned historic resources, emergency recovery funds are available through FEMA

and other sources, but the historical character of this region depends not just on public buildings, but also on privately owned historic properties. The destruction of hundreds of these properties

has unalterably changed the area’s character. Almost immediately

it became clear that many of the damaged products could perhaps

be restored if immediate measures were taken to stabilize them, either by the property owner or by a local government entity. Sadly,

no funds have been available to assist private property owners or

local governments in emergency stabilization of private historic

properties.

A significant number of properties are owned by not-for-profit

groups. Many of these historical buildings housed local museums

and archives. For emergency relief, these nonprofits go to the Small

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Business Administration for a loan. Unfortunately, most of these

groups operate with an all-volunteer staff and a shoestring budget;

they simply do not have the resources to repay a loan.

We must now look at what remains with the new vision. New

structures that were considered of marginal historical value before

Katrina may now be seen as precious because they’re the only surviving evidence of earlier times and because they are survivors of

Katrina, Mississippi’s most recent historical watershed. An illustration is the Turkey Creek Community that we have discussed—mentioned.

The built environment there has been modified over the years as

fortunes improved and residents were able to add to their homes.

So according to our current interpretation of standards for listing

a district in the National Register, Turkey Creek may fall short in

the eyes of Federal reviewers; but in a broader sense, this indigenous community possesses tremendous historical significance. The

people of Turkey Creek and other indigenous communities in this

region stand ready to preserve and restore their historic properties.

So do the not-for-profit groups that operate historic sites. I hope

that the private property owners can gain the recognition they

need to continue their preservation work.

In written testimony I submitted earlier, I supported the three

major packages of points of the National Trust legislative package:

establish historic preservation disaster relief grants; establish a

disaster relief historic homeowner assistance tax credit; provide

waivers to the existing historic preservation tax credit. These recommendations can be implemented within this Nation’s existing

historic preservation program.

I would like to add a fourth recommendation, one for which a

ready-made program does not come to mind, but nonetheless

speaks to the heart of our efforts to preserve our history and culture. To assist local museums, historical societies, and archives operated as not-for-profit organizations, please ensure that FEMA

has some specific authority to provide emergency recovery assistance for the archives, records, and artifacts of which these groups

serve as caretakers.

Mississippians now face a staggering task in attempting to rehabilitate the historic fabric that survived Hurricane Katrina and in

recapturing the sense of place that existed in their communities before August 29, 2005. Those resources that withstood Katrina and

remain today will become the symbols of stability and continuity

around which our communities will rebuild. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Holmes follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. At this point I’d like to acknowledge Mr. Landrieu,

who is the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, who has joined us.

Mr. Landrieu, we swear in our witnesses. And if you would

please rise at this point, I will administer the oath to you and then

we can recognize you for your testimony.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please let the record reflect that he has responded

in the affirmative.

And Mr. Landrieu, if you are ready, you can begin your comments. You may have heard as Mr Holmes was beginning, we have

your written testimony. We appreciate both your time with us

today and your efforts in preparing this testimony.

We would ask that your oral presentation be 5 minutes in length,

and there is a timer light on the table. And then after everyone’s

testimony, we will then go to a question and answer period for the

Members.

STATEMENT OF MITCHELL J. LANDRIEU

Mr. LANDRIEU. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I

thank you for the opportunity to testify before you.

As has been said often in the last 8 to 10 weeks, this was an

American tragedy that requires an American response. It’s a tragedy that had a number of different acts. The first was rescue. That

was a very difficult task for all of us, but we have completed that

task.

We then went through the phase of recovery, which for those of

us sitting at the table was very personal and very difficult, because

many of our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and

aunts and uncles did not survive this tragedy. We are working

through that phase, but we are not quite complete.

But the third part, which is what we’re here to talk about today,

is the rebuild phase. The hard work has yet to begin. The hard

work is beginning now. Many of us said during the storm—and it

has come to pass—that when the television cameras leave and the

country is onto other things like Supreme Court nominations, other

difficult issues during the day, it’s going to be hard to stay focused

on fulfilling the promise that President Bush made to the country

that we’re going to rebuild the gulf coast of this country, not only

because it’s the right thing to do but because it’s essential.

And as we sift through when and how and who and what, it’s

important for us to understand that everybody in the Deep South

knows what accountability means. And the people who are most

adamant about that are actually the people who are affected. And

I can assure you that the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama will make sure that every dollar that is sent by this Congress

will be put on top of private investment insurance and the hard

work and the blood, sweat, and tears of the people in the Deep

South.

The other thing I think is important to remember is that as we

talk about the sense of place that Mr. Holmes talked about, we not

only need to talk about it in terms of past history, but what is the

future. And the fact of the matter is that food, music, culture, historic preservation, are not just nice things for people to see, but

they mean business. And in the State of Louisiana and Mississippi,

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one of the things that we understand is that when you talk about

historic preservation, you’re not really talking about the past,

you’re talking about the future; because we have found innovative

ways to restore properties, historic preservation, and to bring them

into commerce and to create jobs.

And the fact of the matter is that culture means business, and

it also means tourism. And in Louisiana, for example, the tourism

industry is responsible for a $9.6 billion piece of the economy that

provides 126,000 jobs. If you define the cultural economy in its

broader context, the food, historic preservation, architecture, and

things of that sort, it provides 144,000 jobs. And so there is this

wonderful convergence that’s been taking place in the New South

in the past 10 years as most of the people within this Nation have

moved there. We find that people really like culture and they like

food and they like architecture and they like historic preservation.

And those great cities and great places in the world that focus on

those kinds of things are finding that they, in fact, are more economically viable than places that just look like everyplace else.

In Louisiana we have developed a rebirth plan to try to find a

way to regrow the cultural economy. And Dick Moe and the National Trust for Historic Properties and the American Institute of

Architects has partnered with us, and we adopt the legislation

they’re proposing. But in the South it’s important for us to acknowledge a number of things: No. 1, diversity is a strength, not

a weakness. No. 2, we have to find new ways to create jobs, not

just relying on one industry, but on many. The third thing we have

to do is we have to begin to think regionally so that we can compete globally, because it is not parish versus parish or county versus county, it’s the Deep South and the New South competing with

the Northeast and the West and in fact really, and more importantly, China.

We also have to find ways to add value to our raw material, our

raw data, our intellectual capital, that we have a way of just exporting from the Deep South to other places so that people can add

value there and then sell it back to us. What we want to do in the

New South is add value to our raw material and to our intellectual

capital and sell it to the rest of world.

And finally, it’s important for us to really understand that in the

New South that we talk about, where we know that knowledge is

the currency of the new economy, we have to understand that it’s

high standards that we have to set for ourselves. The Southern average is not acceptable anymore because the Southern average, by

definition, it is lower than the national average.

There are those of us in the southern region of this country who

think that we can compete nationally and internationally, and so

what we want to do now as talk about rebuilding the South is to

set international standards that we think we can hit. We are an

international competitor in tourism, we’re an international competitor in oil and gas, there is really no reason why we can’t be an

international competitor on anything that we set our mind to. And

it’s important for the country to recognize that people in the South

are smart, they’re tough, they’re fast, they’re people of faith, family

and country, and we believe that we can compete.

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And so as we move into this rebuilding phase, let’s go back to

the past where we can create a future. How do we invest in our

culture and our history, and how do we invest in technological innovation that can actually make us more of a unique place than

we have been?

I look forward to working with you and the committee and Congress to make this happen. I thank you for your time, and I thank

you for the opportunity to rebuild one of America’s great assets.

Thank you very much.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Landrieu follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Evans.

STATEMENT OF DERRICK EVANS

Mr. EVANS. Chairman Turner, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My name is Derrick Evans, and I am a sixth generation descendent of the men and women who settled coastal Mississippi’s Turkey

Creek Community in 1866, year 1 of reconstruction, following

Southern slavery and Civil War. I am also the founder and executive director of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, a local

501(c)(3) organization engaged in the comprehensive revitalization

of our historic and beleaguered community.

Today I would like to share some insights relevant to our mutual

concern, the historic preservation in the aftermath of Hurricanes

Katrina and Rita.

First and foremost, we must broaden from this point on what we

mean by American, Mississippi, and coastal heritage, and what we

consider to be historic resources. In coastal Mississippi, heritage

discussions and National Register listings often continue for a variety of reasons to exclude a range of traditionally overlooked communities and sites. Even the 2004 congressional legislation enabling the creation of a Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage

Area failed to mention African Americans when listing our region’s

many diverse cultural influences. The same basic tendency has of

course held true with respect to low- and moderate-income communities that have not traditionally been engaged in active or deliberate historic preservation. Indeed, regardless of race or class, nonproximity to the beachfront or to a downtown business district, has

repeatedly served to exclude some very important resources from

our regional sense of self. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Katrina

it is largely these nonlisted people and places that do still stand

to reflect, in the vernacular sense, our shared local and regional

character.

Since Hurricane Katrina hit, I have worked with architects and

planners affiliated with the Governor’s Commission on Renewal

and with structural engineers and architectural historians representing FEMA, the National Trust, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Since long before that, I have done the same with city, county,

and regional planners, observing in each of these contexts that incomplete and fragmented data has prevented some otherwise very

good ideas from moving forward. While it is obvious that updating,

organizing, and disseminating coastal Mississippi’s heritage data

remains a pressing issue, I submit that an even deeper need for

newer and intensive visioning exists. Without GIS data based on

additional community surveys and covering a more complete range

of National Register-eligible structures and areas, the basic values

and goals that have brought each of us here today will not bear

fruit.

In addition to greater inclusion, we must begin to broaden what

we mean by heritage preservation itself, because for the foreseeable

future the most productive use of our region’s historic resources

may very well be housing.

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Whether it is preservation standards and resources or rehab

project management, homeowner education has become increasingly critical on the gulf coast. Needless to say, financial and technical support remain even more so, and herein lies the crux of the

challenge that I believe we now face due to a sweeping and unparalleled disaster. Mississippi is one of the Nation’s poorest States,

and Hurricane Katrina has only worsened the economic prospects

for her coastal residents. A very large number, like my mother,

have lost everything they own, save for a solid old house, minus its

sheetrock, insulation, roofing material, carpeting and so forth. Most

Turkey Creek residents were never in a financial position to benefit

from historic preservation tax credits, and they are even less likely

to need them now.

On the other hand, grants made directly to homeowners of National Register-eligible properties will do far more to courage Federal historic preservation among low- and moderate-income people

as well as among minorities in general. The same holds true for

grants or loans to damaged churches and small businesses and

neighborhoods where their continued existence is both vital and reflective of their community’s culture.

Finally, and perhaps most important regarding the central issue

of housing, a combined preservation and rehabilitation mortgage

loan with low down payment and interest rate could achieve in one

sweep several distinct goals that from time to time concern this

subcommittee: home ownership, historic preservation, housing rehabilitation, and neighborhood revitalization.

Based on my own experience, HUD’s 203(k) program would be an

ideal model, as its intended purpose has always been to promote

owner-occupant first-time buyers who revitalize existing distressed

housing. While working with a HUD-certified fee inspector to complete the standard write-up and jointly approved draws from a

rehab escrow account, I became a homeowner in 1997 while restoring a turn-of-the-century classic Boston triple-decker to its original

architectural integrity. Perhaps this option, with the additional

goal of National Register listing, will be made available to gulf

coast residents through congressional legislation in the wake of

Katrina. Whatever it is, something must be done soon, or more

homes and potential heritage structures will be lost in very short

order.

Thank you very much.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Evans follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Ms. Gay.

STATEMENT OF PATRICIA H. GAY

Ms. GAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to present recommendations at this policy

hearing today.

We greatly appreciate the concern for our unique city, and we

hope that as we craft our recovery efforts, that other cities might

also benefit. Ours is a story of a city of almost half a million, with

tens of thousands of buildings that were flooded and remain empty

today.

It is particularly appropriate that this committee address this

topic, because preservation provides one of the best examples of the

three levels of government working in partnership, and also of how

public and private sectors can work together for the benefit of all

citizens. These partnerships have been instrumental in reversing

urban decline in most American cities; indeed, we wish there would

be more recognition of this fact.

First and foremost, of course, our levees must be rebuilt stronger

than before if our city is to recover and grow. But as we plan our

recovery, we should look to past successes in our own city and in

others. When we do so, we see that wherever historic architecture

and neighborhoods are protected, property values increase, economies improve, and cultural heritage is enriched and perpetuated

for future generations.

The reason New Orleans has generated so much love and veneration from people around the world before and after the storm is

because of historic preservation. The city we know today simply

would not be but for the legislative act that created the Vieux

Carre Commission in the 1930’s, action that has been economically

effective as well, and that anchored all other older neighborhoods

in New Orleans in the following decades when other cities experienced major decline.

The role preservation has played in our city’s growth must be understood, and preservation must be a critical part of our recovery

efforts. The disaster’s flooding occurred in our 20th century neighborhoods, some of which are on the National Register or are eligible for National Register listing. We know there is hope for these

areas, but not unless we do the right things. However, our older

neighborhoods, which developed prior to 1900, did not suffer serious damage, all having been built on higher ground. Down river

from the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, we have Faubourg Marine, New Marine and Bywater, which suffered minimal damage.

Even Holy Cross in the Lower Ninth Ward was built on higher

ground, and it will regain vitality once electricity and water are restored.

Going north from the Vieux Carre toward the lake, beautiful Esplanade Ridge and Treme are basically, as is Algiers Point, across

the river. All of the neighborhoods upriver from the Vieux Carre

that one would see from the St. Charles Avenue Street Car line or

from the McGavin Street bus did not flood, and suffered comparatively minimal wind damage. Many avenues lined with live oak

trees are still with us.

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So foremost in our recommendations is that our city value this

good fortune and take the opportunity to put in place planning and

regulation to guide new development and protection and restoration measures for what remains.

All proposed development and recovery efforts must enhance and

complement the irreplaceable economic resource of the city’s historic architecture and neighborhoods. Already a 30-story building is

proposed for Rampart and Canal Street in the Vieux Carre. Here

in Washington such a project would not be acceptable. We can look

to our capital city for inspiration in seeking solutions that would

attract appropriate development and to rebuild our population.

Our next recommendation addresses the need to attract homeowners back to our city. We urge this committee to support the creation of a grants program, as advocated by the National Trust, that

would be administered by the National Park Service and the State

Preservation Office, and to support a one-time rehabilitation tax

credit for homeowners in the disaster areas. Here in Washington

you have seen how effective such initiatives can be for rebuilding

populations. We truly need these Federal incentives for homeowners to return and repair their houses.

At the local level, our city must devise a plan and apply resources to encourage and assist homeowners in returning to their

homes. This is a priority for my organization, working with the National Trust, but much more must be done. The State should be encouraged to take advantage of successful preservation programs to

stimulate economic development, such as the expanded use of the

Main Street program, and of our brand new State homeowner

rehab tax credit.

Regarding HUD programs, we urge that the objective of mixed

incomes and neighborhoods be a guiding principle in use of funds.

Finally, we cannot stress enough the importance of a section 106

review process of the National Preservation Act. We feel confident

in this process. However, we are concerned that there may well be

renewed enthusiasm for demolitions without the use of Federal

funds, which triggers a review. This could be prevented by having

sound planning, regulation and protection in place, as mentioned

earlier.

I have submitted other recommendations in writing to you, and

I thank you sincerely for this opportunity to address this topic

today.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gay follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Preziosi.

STATEMENT OF DAVID PREZIOSI

Mr. PREZIOSI. Chairman Turner and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

Mississippi was forever changed on August 29th when Katrina

ripped through the State. Not only did she take lives, but she also

took the very heart and fabric of many of Mississippi’s historic communities. Katrina’s path left unimagined devastation, destroying

complete blocks of historic houses, and left others in shambles.

Many important historic landmarks are gone all along the coast,

including the 1856 Tullis-Toledano Manor, which was crushed by

a casino barge that was dropped on top of it by the storm surge.

While the damage extended well inland in the State, the three

coastal counties of Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson were the hardest hit. In those three counties, there are 15 National Register historic districts and 114 individually listed National Registry properties, as well as two National Historic Landmarks. Approximately

22 individually listed buildings and 300 buildings in historic districts were lost, with at least 1,000 more sustaining varying degrees of damage.

My first trip to the coast involved a visit to Beauvoir, one of two

National Historic Landmarks on the coast. I was astounded to find

the destruction to the main house and the site was massive, with

several historic outbuildings completely gone, and the wrap-around

gallery torn off the main house. Traveling further down the coast

I witnessed massive destruction to both historic and nonhistoric

buildings alike, but was surprised to see that many historic buildings survived, but with varying degrees of damage.

After that trip, the State Historic Preservation Office staff and

I began to do damage assessment in each of the coastal communities. To date, we have surveyed over 1,200 historic structures and

have assessed along the coastline. We encountered numerous historic buildings with extensive storm-surge damage or structures

that were pushed completely off of their foundation, such as the

charming houses in Ocean Springs attributed to Frank Lloyd

Wright. Along the coast were also extensive roof damage from

wind, tornadoes, and fallen trees, such as in Bay St. Louis.

The Federal role in the preservation of historic properties damaged by Katrina should begin with additional technical support for

FEMA in the field. More structural engineers and architects familiar with historic structures are needed to help evaluate the condition of damaged properties listed on the National Register. Currently in Mississippi, FEMA has only contracted with one structural engineer, three preservation consultants, and an architectural

historian. All of them have to cover 72 miles of coastline and 12

municipalities in three counties, not including the other noncoastal

counties also affected by Katrina. Structural engineers are key in

helping property owners and local building officials evaluate the

structures to determine if they are salvageable.

Another major role of the Federal Government would be to help

provide disaster relief assistance for historic properties through

programs like the historic homeowners assistance tax credit and

$60 million historic preservation disaster relief plans proposed by

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the National Trust. This grant money could help stabilize damage

to historic properties, provide owners time to figure out what can

be done to save their properties, and be used for gap funding where

insurance does not cover the full repair to historic structures, or

where lower-income historic property owners may not have adequate insurance. In many cases, people that suffered flood damage

outside of the FEMA flood zones did not have flood insurance, and

that damage was not covered by regular insurance, only covering

wind and rain damage.

The State role in the preservation of historic properties should be

to provide additional technical assistance and services to historic

property owners and cities with damaged National Register properties within their boundaries. The other role is for the State emergency agency, MEMA in Mississippi, to work more closely with the

State Historic Preservation Office and FEMA. We have little support from MEMA regarding cultural resources, which has hampered efforts of the FEMA staff which must be asked in reviewing

by the State. There needs to be a mechanism to override this requirement if necessary.

The local role is to work with the Federal and State agencies to

better protect local historic resources. Local governments need to

give the historic property owners the chance to evaluate their

structures to see if they can be salvaged before they are tagged for

removal in the cleanup process. They also need to keep their local

preservation controls and ordinances in place to help protect the remaining historic character of the community. It has been absolutely

heartbreaking to see so many of our beloved historic structures in

ruins or severely damaged.

Much work lies ahead if we are to save the remaining historic

places that are important to the historic character of Mississippi,

which is crucial to the historic tourism market in the States. All

levels of government—Federal, State, and local—must work together and form partnerships that strive to give every effort and

assistance possible to those who own properties important enough

to be listed on the National Register.

We must not let Katrina take any more historic structures

through a lack of effort or coordination on the part of the different

levels of government. When you have pieces of your historic fabric

ripped from you so violently and quickly, it is important that we

do all that we can to save the remaining historic structures that

now define the historic character of the coast. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Preziosi follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. I again appreciate each of you and the time that

you have spent on this issue and bringing attention to it. We all

know, and it’s acknowledged in your comments, that this issue certainly is subordinate to the issues of safety and personal needs of

communities.

But as is evident in each of your comments, with the issue of historic preservation, so many times it’s an issue of decisions that are

being made where we are not aware of them, we’re not preparing

for them, we’re not planning, and so through that we might lose

some national treasures.

It is my honor now to recognize Mr. Melancon, who is from Louisiana, from the Third District, who has joined us for his opening

comments and questions.

Mr. MELANCON. I didn’t really have any prepared comments. I

came today because of my concern for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and of course the preservation of historic property structures

and whatever throughout the area.

With my work with the Lieutenant Governor and other people

housed in the State legislature, historic preservation in New Orleans was always one of the forefronts of things that we concern ourselves with, and this storm has not made that easy.

As I look at what is happening and hear that there is a 50 percent threshold on demolition of structures in New Orleans—and I

don’t know if that is actually the fact, I wonder—and one of the

questions I would like to put forth is what exactly do we know

what FEMA and the Corps of Engineers’ marching orders are toward demolition of property; and in particular, how do we know

how they are going to treat historic properties? That’s kind of why

I came, to hopefully see if anybody knows what’s going on. And I

appreciate the opportunity of being allowed to sit in with the committee. Thank you, sir.

Mr. TURNER. From a practical standpoint, we have two panels

that includes from the first panel, individuals from the affected

communities who can speak to their experience and what they’re

seeing on the ground. And then also in the second panel, we have

individuals from the national perspective who will be talking about

the obligations and coordination efforts. In response to that, if any

of you would like to speak as to how that coordination is occurring.

Throughout most of your written testimony you talk about ways in

which this effort can be improved with FEMA and its coordination.

Lieutenant Governor, would you like to begin?

Mr. LANDRIEU. I’ll take a crack at that, Mr. Chairman. Congressman, it is nice to see you. Thank you for coming this morning.

Mr. Chairman, just in response to some of the comments you

made briefly, there is no question that the priorities in the gulf

coast are levees, and then of course wetland restoration, because

those are the things that will protect whatever it is that we build

back. However, it would seem to beg the question that once you

build the levees and the wetlands to protect something, the question is what are you trying to protect? And what we’re trying to

protect will be a result of choices that we make. And the choices

that we make will be guided by the principles that we think are

important. And if we believe that historic preservation is economic

development, which many of us in the Deep South believe—and we

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have seen many examples of that in recent years—and it is important for the tax policy to reflect principles that are going to allow

us to make those choices that will then yield the consequences that

we intend.

And I think that’s why many of us are here today. Not just to

say let’s restore what was there, but to talk about how you can

build jobs with historic preservation and economic development.

Congressman Melancon, the answer to your question is: I don’t

know right now. I think that the mayor of the city of New Orleans

and the Governor and their two commissions are working with

FEMA to design a process that will address what needs to be torn

down and what can be preserved. What we’re trying to do is to inform them, through the advocacy groups that we have, about how

important is to have embedded in their assessment teams individuals from the American Institute of Architects or folks from the

Historic Trust, so that when those decisions are made they’re not

just made without regard to the consequence of the decisions that

they make.

I know that in a couple of weeks there is going to be a summit

that’s being held by both the Governor and the mayor and the

American Institute of Architects to actually talk about this 50-percent-plus–1 rule, because there is some confusion about what it

really means. And of course it may change from neighborhood to

neighborhood. I think that’s an unsettled issue as of now. You

won’t be surprised to know that sometimes there are mixed signals

coming out of FEMA on this issue. I think they are trying to figure

out exactly what it means. And it may mean something different

in Mississippi than it does in Louisiana. But I agree we have to

find the right approach, the right rule, and then we have to make

sure the assessment teams are in the place.

As Mr. Preziosi said, there are not a lot of feet on the ground;

actually, we need more feet on the ground, and assessment. There

are people that have offered to do that for us, and hopefully the

Governor and the mayor will take advantage of that. And I’m sure

in Mississippi the same will be true as well. Thank you.

Ms. GAY. The 50 percent rule is a very subjective thing, and I

think it’s going to be subjective geographically as well. It is something that concerns me. We see people cleaning out their buildings

and preparing them for livability that were perhaps more than 50

percent damaged. Yet we see many streets where nobody is coming

back yet, and we’re very concerned about these properties. People

are afraid of the mold. We are giving mold workshops. The mold

can be removed. There is a lot of hysteria about it. It’s a lot of hard

work to get rid of, but it can be eliminated. Houses can be restored

to livability. And our focus, of course, is the historic properties, the

National Register, and eligible areas.

But think of it this way: A city is a living organism. I think, OK,

my head is very important, but I’m not going to worry about my

arms and legs. The whole city is very important to us, and whatever happens to one half of our city certainly will affect the remaining historic properties.

So we do try to look at the city holistically, at the same time focusing our efforts on the National Register areas or eligible areas.

And we are pleased that the FEMA team is agreeing with us. We

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have a member of our staff who has been out on several of the

team’s inspections, and we are in agreement about the properties.

So we feel good about that part of FEMA. But as the Lieutenant

Governor said, we do not know what is happening in the other

areas, we do not know what is planned for the newer parts of our

city.

Mr. TURNER. Does anyone else wish to comment on this issue?

If not, I will recognize Mr. Dent from Pennsylvania.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing to

investigate the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the historic culture

and infrastructure of the gulf coast region.

Much has been said—I’ll submit my statement for the record—

but I am excited to be here to discuss this important subject.

My question, though, really is going to be directed, I guess, to

Ms. Gay from New Orleans. How effective do you believe these historic preservation tax credits will be as opposed to, say, a direct

grant program, particularly for the low/moderate income folks?

Ms. GAY. Well, I think we have to have in the tax credit, grants

provision so that a low-income homeowner could utilize it fully, either through a rebate or certificate or something. I think that the

success of the tax credit program is outstanding. I mean, it is remarkable, the effectiveness of it. It goes through the State Preservation Offices, as you know. And our office does a really good job.

It is one of the most outstanding in the country. So it gives credibility there and I think confidence in the grants that the Federal

Government might see fit to give.

Mr. DENT. I have observed it’s a good program as well. My main

concern is, you know the circumstances of the folks down there better than I do right now. And I just wonder if a direct grant approach would be more effective at this particular moment than a

tax credit program. If anyone else would like to comment on that,

feel free.

Mr. LANDRIEU. I would like to comment on that if I could. First

of all—and Congressman Melancon will understand this—for the

record, all of southern Louisiana, almost all of it got hit from Lake

Charles to Cameron to Vermilion, some structures in Baton Rouge,

even in Lafayette, and then in the home of Thibodaux, Terrebonne,

New Orleans, Washington, St. Tammany, we had 13 parishes. And

so all of the comments that we’re making relating to historic preservation applies equally to those, maybe in a different context, but

they’ve been decimated as well.

And Congressman, I would say this to that request. Both of them

are necessary and both of them are important for the same reason.

One of the principles that we’re trying to really push is that diversity is a strength, not a weakness. Having mixed-use neighborhoods is really critically important.

The historic tax credit that Patty Gay told you about has been

just a great tool to revitalize historic neighborhoods. The Warehouse District, which basically blossomed after a failed World’s

Fair, was a result of historic tax credits; a tax abatement program

where people actually went in and took old warehouses for furniture and have turned them into to the Renaissance Arts Hotel

which has used the historic tax credit to renovate an old building

and made a hotel and created jobs. There is a museum in it, and

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a wonderful restaurant by a world-class chef. That is the cultural

economy. And that happened because of the historic tax credit.

When you’re looking at other neighborhoods, I’m not talking

about renovating big buildings into condos under the historic tax

credit, but when you’re talking about specific structures in mixeduse neighborhoods, having grants are important, but also having

tax credits that can be taken advantage of by lower-income individuals are critical to that very basic principle.

So I would rather not have to choose between the two and really

promote both of them, because at the end of the day, again, we

need the levees and the wetlands. The question is what are you

going to protect? And that has to be worthwhile as well, which is

why on this housing strategy, that needs to be the goal we’re trying

to achieve. And we find the different kinds of tools that can get us

there.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Evans, do you have a comment on that?

Mr. EVANS. Well, I would agree that you don’t want to have it

reduced to a choice between the two; it’s all needed. But I live in

a community that is a low-income census track in the city of Gulfport that was annexed about 10 years ago. Many of the houses

that—the older homes that would be National Register-eligible,

don’t just have storm damage, don’t just have a need to meet the

Secretary of the Interior’s standards, particularly on the outside of

the home to, you know, to get this listing or to qualify for some of

these credits and so forth.

They also have, as a result of poverty, some deferred maintenance issues. And some of these homes have never met the Gulfport code because they were built 70 years before we were part of

Gulfport. So the people I’m talking about, they don’t have the startup capital to wait for a tax credit or a rebate to kick in later. In

fact, even though we have been celebrating with great glee the very

timely decision by the Department of Archives and History to make

the recommendation that the entire community be considered by

the Interior Department for registry listing, the fact remains that

even though in one sense it seems like we’re off to the races, well,

in another sense, we don’t have a horse yet.

Mr. DENT. Understood. And my observation in my own district

is that these historic preservation tax credits have been enormously effective in my area over the years. At the State level we

have done some interesting work on that issue.

But one more question. And Governor Landrieu, last time I saw

you we were at a hearing, Transportation Infrastructure Committee, and I raised a question to Mayor Nagin about what appeared

to be, hopefully, a proposal that has gone by the wayside that

would essentially create a Las Vegas life in New Orleans. I’m

told—is it true that proposal is now off the table? I hope it is.

Mr. LANDRIEU. Yes.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Charles W. Dent follows:]

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Mr. MELANCON. One of the dilemmas—and this is an observation

for the members of the committee, because many of the areas were

in nonFEMA-designated flood zones—no mortgage required any

flood coverage. What has happened with the flooded area is that

the insurance companies are denying claims other than if it’s roof

damage or it’s something that can be proved that it’s wind damage.

Then on the other hand those people—and Gene Taylor and I authored a bill about flood insurance—but those people that were in

nonflood-prone areas in some of these historic preservation homes

didn’t have to buy flood insurance, and so they’ve got no coverage

whatsoever, even though they bought what policies they thought

they needed to take care of a situation like this. So we’ve got a lot

of structures. And if you’re looking into low-income areas, first of

all, the insurance factor; the second thing is affordability. And if

you’re going to preserve any of these things, you’re going to have

to have some grants coupled with tax incentives, because otherwise

some of these will never get back up.

Mr. EVANS. That’s right.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. I’m fine, thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Evans, in talking about the efforts that you

have undertaken in both preserving your community and redeveloping your community, you have the issue of the preservation of

heritage, and you have the added issue, as you have indicated, of

the issues of poverty, which has become a significant issue as we

look to the evacuation processes and individuals who were not

given the assistance that they needed, both during evacuation and

postevacuation.

You raised an important issue, and that is home ownership and

the opportunity to look at both the grant structures and the programs that we provide for assistance in the area to provide an opportunity for home ownership. And you mentioned, of course, your

own experience with HUD’s program and how it might be able to

apply in your community. And I want to give you an opportunity

to speak some more on the issue of the importance of opportunities

for home ownership through grant programs.

As we look to each of these funding opportunities for reconstruction, redevelopment, I think one of the things that you have raised

in the issue of home ownership is that we will also have an opportunity to couple that with having an impact on people’s lives. And

if you would speak on that, I would appreciate it.

Mr. EVANS. Yes. I think at the end of the day what we all want

as much as possible is people owning homes, living in those homes,

those homes being insurable, those homes being mortgageable, and

those people taking a responsibility, the personal responsibility to

maintain that home. And it’s almost like making lemonade out of

lemons, you know, in the aftermath of Katrina, that where you see

now that so much of what is left of our architectural heritage in

my part of the coast are some of the more humble, scalewise, structures, coastal bungalows, even some shotgun homes. But there are

plenty of people in the city of Gulfport now, evacuees who would

relish an opportunity to call one of those places home, and who

would speak with pride about the additional benefit or even conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:56 Apr 24, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\25541.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tribution to society of having that home being a reflection to all of

our shared coastal and southern and American heritage.

I think we have an opportunity here, by joining together,

marrying together some of these normally disunited or

disobjectives, literally—no pun intended—under one roof. I think

we ought to jump on that. I mean, it’s just something I think is

as clear as water.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Many times in the testimony that we have been provided the 106

review process is identified and discussed both in its importance

and in the issue of the need to provide additional resources to the

area so that the 106 review process can be utilized effectively.

There are, as you know, many critics of the 106 review process.

And these critics, in looking at the issue, many times believe that

the process inhibits redevelopment, growth, or development potential.

I think the theme in the testimony that we have before us is so

important to focus on, and that is the issue of the importance of

106 review process—what it gives us, what it accomplishes—and

also the issue that has an impediment. The issue of resources is

really where we need to focus, and it can make the process more

effective.

I would like it if each of you would comment on that, and we’ll

begin with the Lieutenant Governor.

Mr. LANDRIEU. The 106 review process is implemented in State

government under the auspices of the Department of Parks and

Recreation and Tourism, which is the department that I help run.

It’s a very important process.

It’s not the process itself that is the problem, and as Patty said

earlier, so much of this is subjective, it’s what the principles are

that guide the review process. And so as we think through this, if

we get the principles right and we have the resources, then it

seems to me that the consequences will be good ones rather than

bad ones. There is always almost a zero-sum game that goes on between developers and those that are interested in historic preservation. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.

There is a tremendous amount of consensus that can come to the

floor when you’re talking about development and the preservation

of historic properties, especially if you accept the principle that historic preservation is economic development. And there have been

many wonderful examples, as Ms. Gay said earlier, especially in

Louisiana and many in Mississippi as well, where we have really

kind of led the Nation in showing people that you can actually do

both.

You also now know from Mr. Evans how critical it is if you’re trying to create a mixed-use neighborhood, how you can do that with

grants and historic tax credits for low-income folks.

So again, I don’t think it’s the process that’s the problem. I think

it’s really how it’s been used and maybe how it’s been abused; how

it’s been perceived by both. But this has given us a new opportunity, because as many people have seen, the things that we have

taken for granted are the things that the country seems to miss the

most already. And when we talk about rebuilding the soul of America, one of the things we’re talking about is our history and our

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sense of place and our sense of music. And all those cultural things

that we think just happened by accident, unfortunately they’re not

going to be there by accident anymore. And so we have to go back

in and look at the process, make sure that it’s used appropriately,

and perhaps most importantly, make sure we have the resources

to actually do the job.

There is going to be some philanthropic fatigue that sets in. The

American Institute of Architects will only do things for free for us

for so long. Folks will only come in for a short period of time. But

if you don’t have the people on the ground and the resources to get

the job done and have somebody from the SHPO offices embedded

in each one of those FEMA teams over the long haul—because

make no mistake about it, there are no easy fixes, as Mr. Dent said

about the mayor’s casino proposal. There is no quick start to economic revitalization. This is a long haul.

This is a long haul. It’s going to take a long time, and if we’re

committed to it, we have to have the resources to get it done. Then

if we do, I think we’ll do a good job.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Holmes.

Mr. HOLMES. Unfortunately, it is very seldom a win-win situation between the preservationists and the developers. On the Mississippi gulf coast, because of some of the good work that we have

done with the historic preservation work, the staff of the Department and with the Mississippi Heritage Trust, we have any numbers of people calling us begging us to come in as soon as possible

to do assessments. They were very protective of their neighborhoods. This was pretty much across the spectrum down there.

We were in fear that there might be some hurry-up activity down

there from a city engineer or Corps of Engineers to get started with

destruction, but overall it has been a good situation in the sense

that the public recognition of this review process is there, and

there was a very strong desire that the communities be preserved.

So in this case we’re able to go down and work with the communities, with the local governments that for the most part have been

very supportive of this process. Of course, they’re in the process

now of fusioning the new coast, and we hope to have very much

a strong role in playing, in suggesting a large part of our heritage

needs to be preserved in that.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Evans.

Ms. Gay.

Ms. GAY. I have a slightly different perspective. I think the preservation program, as I said earlier, is an exemplary example of

Federal, State, local agencies working together, public and private,

and section 106’s review process is a critical part of the program.

There are many other aspects of the program. We need all of them.

And I was just talking to Ed McMahon of Urban Land Institute a

few days ago, and he was pointing out that the cities with rules

and regulations are the cities that are doing the best economically.

Developers will not leave when you have rules and regulations; in

fact, that’s a sign that you know what you’re doing, your city has

its act together. And so it attracts development.

So section 106 is a way to deal with the fact that you have Federal moneys and programs that are often hard for local and State

governments to say no to, and yet we can’t say, oh, we have to save

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those buildings in the face of all this money that might be coming.

That’s why we put it in place. And it has worked very well, and

I guess perhaps we’re lucky that we have such a good preservation

office in the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.

But I would also like to say that some States even have the

equivalent of a section 106 process, and I wish we had it in Louisiana, and I think it’s good for the Federal Government to do it; why

shouldn’t the city do it? Why shouldn’t a city say, well, how would

our funding this project affect our historic resources? I think it’s a

good example that the Federal Government has set, and I hope

that we see more of a review rather than less. Thank you.

Mr. PREZIOSI. I think section 106 process is really crucial to saving our historic properties. One thing that we found being on the

coast and holding public meetings with the local people there,

they’re terrified their houses are going to be torn down without

their approval. A lot is rumors and things floating around, but section 106 at least slows down that process and gives owners and cities a chance to look at the buildings and determine whether or not

they are salvageable. I realize many of them won’t be salvageable

and will be taken down, but at least the 106 process gives it that

time to review it and to make sure that every effort is taken to

save it.

I had one property owner on the gulf coast who was afraid—it

was going to cost him $45,000 to tear down his house. He wanted

to save his house, but he didn’t want to pass up the time limit for

the demolition removal by FEMA, which now has been extended to

the end of November. But he was scared if he tried to find somebody to look at his house and investigate whether or not it could

be saved, that he would pass that period, and he would have to

spend the $45,000 to demolish his house. So I think by having the

106 process, at least it slows it down a little and gives people a little bit more time to investigate, and I think that’s the biggest benefit of having it in place.

Mr. TURNER. In looking at the testimony and focusing on the

issue of gap needs, where we’re already having significant discussion and where we are not, one of the things that I think was very

helpful was the discussion of the need for dollars with respect to

stabilization of structures in an attempt to save them for the future, and/or, as you were saying, Mr. Preziosi, to do additional

evaluation prior to demolition.

I appreciate in all of your recommendations there are some great

information here on what we need to do with the existing Historic

Preservation Tax Credits as we look to rehabilitation and the economic development for the area, historic home ownership assistance tax credits and others grants. If you would take a moment to

speak of the need for stabilization moneys as we look to try to both

evaluate and preserve these for the future.

Lieutenant Governor.

Mr. LANDRIEU. It’s critical. It goes back to Mr. Dent’s question

about whether grants or tax credits. The truth is you need both.

The same thing is true with the gap as well. You have a problem,

and it’s called cash-flow, and some people have it, and most people

don’t. And so you have to find a way to make that happen in order

to stabilize these structures.

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A lot of this is a timing issue as well. If you can envision, for

example, the whole neighborhoods in the New Orleans area, also

some in Cameron Parish, that are just gone.

So it’s not an issue whether you maintain historic properties or

not. Some neighbors have some historic properties, some don’t. As

the city tries to figure out what they’re going to do with FEMA,

folks actually are sitting there waiting. Some people have resources, some people don’t. So just the stabilization of these particular structures is of critical importance to us as we look to

what’s going to happen a year from now, 2, 3 years. It’s not as

though people are there and somebody is going to flip a switch and

start working tomorrow. Just the mundane stuff of getting building

permits out of the city of New Orleans that as recently as 2 weeks

ago laid off 3,000 people as you can see is not as easy as folks seem

to think it is.

So anything that we can do to stabilize what is there now is

going to be very helpful. If you don’t, you will get to the point, as

Mr. Evans said earlier, by attrition destroying things that the

storm actually did not destroy.

Mr. HOLMES. Over the last three decades we have responded to

various hurricanes on the coast. Katrina has rewritten so many

rules because this hurricane was so different from anything that

we’ve ever had, and one of the big differences was in its widespread

catastrophic devastation. In previous hurricanes the damage was

fairly localized so that the support services along the coast were

still there. Very quickly people could come in and help owners of

private homes to do stabilization. The devastation was so widespread here. No support services existed for several, several days;

that if we in Jackson had some grant funds to work with immediately to be able to provide minimal stabilization of some of these

structures, it’s quite possible that they could have been saved,

again with a minimum of taxpayer money spent, but it just takes

a little sometimes to be able to help.

These folks were trying to get their lives back together in ways

that they never had to try before, and we were there to provide assistance, but also step back to be there for the future as people

began to rebuild and provide resources for the long term.

This occurs with all sorts of historic resources there, but as I said

earlier, it was probably the biggest need early on was to have little

funds to be able to provide immediate assistance to these owners.

Mr. EVANS. Well, Turkey Creek is in a unique and ironic position

right now. The fact is that for years before Katrina, we had been

the squeakiest wheel, not necessarily the most historic black community on the gulf coast. But in the aftermath of Katrina, as Mr.

Holmes and I were talking before this hearing, he indicated that

the storm made it crucially, patently clear to his department how

special and worth the extra effort a place like Turkey Creek actually was because of how much was lost.

I think, however, that the flow of information to other neighborhoods and communities, not just African American communities,

communities where this potential for not losing potentially habitable heritage structures that can provide home ownership opportunities for people, they’re not as ramped up as well as the Turkey

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Creek community is about the resources that are available as far

as immediate assessments from structural engineers and so forth.

I mean, I have watched these structural engineers and the architectural historians walk through several times in the city of Gulfport, and they’re very responsive to calls from people that are curious to know, but I just think that they’re overstaffed—they’re

understaffed, I assume underfunded, time is of the essence, and in

varying degrees the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And I have

thought and talked over dinner with several of the folks on these

assessment teams about things like how do you prioritize. Should

they go hunting, if you will, for areas where, say, for instance, you

might get 10 or 20 of these type of potential heritage new home

ownership opportunities compared to something that maybe the

mayor of a particular coastal community told them to go spend

some time assessing like, you know, a grand antebellum something

down on the beach front or a public building that is of more immediate concern to the local leadership because of their understanding

of heritage priorities at this point.

I don’t think—so I think a lot of people are on a learning curve

right now, and some folks are not in the same place. I think we

in Turkey Creek know about as much going on because of what

we’ve been involved with these departments for quite a while, and

I think it’s one of the unwritten tragedies of Katrina that may very

well spell a tremendous amount of more loss of things that the

storm didn’t take out, and that has to do with the understanding

and the flow of information and the dialog and process. These folks

are doing their job.

Ms. GAY. I’d like to say I’m sure we all want to leverage any dollars public or private, but we’re talking about public here, as much

as possible. There’s one thing that we need to think a little differently about, and that is the energy and the heart and soul, the

dedication of the individual homeowner. There are thousands of

New Orleanians who haven’t come back. They haven’t come back

to Gentilly Terrace, Broadmoor, to South Lakeview, to Mid-City

and Parkview. Some of them are just waiting, they’re just waiting.

Some brave souls are coming and said, I’m going to do my house

no matter what. This is energy, when one person comes back, then

another one comes back, then another one comes back.

We have to think of how can we make this happen in a bigger

way, not just the National Register districts, but in other districts;

how can we leverage this incredible strength and energy of the individual homeowner. I was reading in the Washington Post this

morning about a homeowner who’d gotten evacuated and is in

Washington and finally gotten a job, but sounds like he’s crying

every day that he’s not back home in New Orleans. It didn’t say

where his house was. There is that.

So what can we do, how can you help us? I think the symbolism

of the grants and tax incentives is as important as the actual dollars, because it shows we want you to come back. I have seen that

in preservation grants time and time again. The main street

grants, they’re small. They really in the end don’t make the difference financially in a project sometimes, but it is the symbolism

of it, the commitment to the whole main street, the fact that

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gram, and it’s a good government program. Let’s not overlook that.

Thank you.

Mr. PREZIOSI. I think stabilization is crucial at this point. I think

with a little effort with stabilization at the beginning, we can save

a lot more buildings. For instance, there’s a house in Pass Christian that the storm surge washed out the first floor, and the second

floor was being held up by its interior wall studs and chimney, and

I was there on September 16th and photographed that house, and

almost 2 weeks later, on September 28th, the house had completely

fallen. So if there was some way to stabilize that at that point, we

could have saved that house.

At the Mississippi Heritage Trust we’re doing a stabilization

pilot program with some money that we received from the National

Trust and from Johnson & Johnson to actually go out in the community and do stabilization of about 10 to 20 homes. We’re working

on selecting those homes right now to prove that with a little bit

of money, we can stop these houses from deteriorating any further.

Give the owners some time to help to figure out, work with insurance, work with other agencies to get the money to eventually restore the house and save the house.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. I just wanted to clarify, in my district we’ve had some

great success with historic preservation using various incentives, I

don’t recall if we used tax credit or not, and I know that under normal circumstances restoring historic properties is very difficult, and

it’s a lot of hard work, and, as Ms. Gay has suggested, the people

who do this see things that a lot of the rest of us just don’t. We

can drive by an old property, and it’s a cruddy old property, and

somebody else sees a beautiful historic property in a vision.

I guess my question is you’re not operating under normal circumstances by any means down there, and so the question is you

have to restore basic service and rebuild infrastructure and stabilize all these damaged properties and buildings and other facilities. And we all believe in historic preservation. Where does that

fit into the grand scheme of things? Maybe the question should be

addressed to the Lieutenant Governor. As you’re trying to do all

these things simultaneously, how do you set priorities? Where does

historic preservation fit into that grand scheme?

Mr. LANDRIEU. Well, I think it’s a very high priority for a number of different reasons. Obviously, the first priority is to protect

yourself from the next storm. That’s levees, and that’s wetlands.

Those are both really big ticket items for the American people, but

they’re necessary. You can’t afford not to do them unless you’re

willing to write off the gulf coast of the country, and I don’t think

anybody in this country is proposing that seriously. I know some

people are proposing it, but I don’t think they’re serious about it.

But again, the next question then gets to be what do you do next;

police, fire, all of those essential services. The point that is you

really have to do them all, and there are many of us working on

many different fronts that have responsibilities for particular

areas, and our responsibility at this table is historic preservation,

but, again, not just for the point of preserving it. It gets you payback that I think many people have underestimated.

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In Louisiana we’re really trying to get people to understand what

the words ‘‘cultural economy’’ mean so that when you are renovating a historic property, not only are you putting that property back

in commerce, not only are you maybe creating a homeowner, but

also putting an artisan back to work, bricklayer or brick mason.

You have an architect that’s working in a way they don’t really get

to work when they’re working on modern buildings. You have a

whole scale of employment that responds to that, that in Louisiana

provides 144,000 jobs. That’s a big deal. And so if people are going

back to work and making money, they can then afford to do what

they’re going to do in their own homes and neighborhoods. So it’s

a critical piece of it.

I guess maybe another way to answer is if we didn’t pay attention to it and didn’t care and wasn’t a priority, then what would

happen? What would happen is the consequence would be that you

would have an area that doesn’t look anything like it looks now,

and you would lose a very important piece of American history and

American culture.

So I think it’s a dangerous trap to get into, and I got into this

trap, when you’re running for office, somebody says, what do you

like better, police and fire, or the arts, as though that’s a good

choice. Well, if you ask them, well, let’s talk about funding the arts,

and let’s talk about what it means.

Mr. DENT. I understand we have to find ways to preserve this

history, these properties; the question is when. You have so many

things on your plate, the question is, I understand it’s a priority,

but I guess timing.

Mr. LANDRIEU. You have to do it all simultaneously, and you

have to find a way to make that right. The people that are working

on levees are not talking about historic preservation, but the people

talking about the housing strategy as opposed to building a level

at Cat 5 or building a wetlands in a particular way, there’s a whole

other group of individuals that have focus on housing and what

housing means. When you start talking about that, I would argue

strenuously you can’t speak about housing without talking about

historic preservation and architecture and having the kinds of folks

we talked about embedded in that process so that when it’s designed from the beginning, you have a pretty good idea of what the

consequences are that you want to yield. So, unfortunately, we’re

compelled to do a lot of things at once, and we better get it right,

because we’re not going to have the chance to do it again.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. I want to thank everyone on this panel for participating, both your preparation for coming here, the time that you

have spent here, but also the things that you’re doing in your community to make certain recovery continues and that historic preservation is an issue that is addressed in the process. So on behalf of

all the members of the committee, we want to thank you, and I certainly encourage you to look to ways we might be able to assist

your successful efforts. Thank you.

At this time then we’ll turn to panel two, which includes John

Nau, chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation;

Dr. Janet Matthews, Associate Director for Cultural Resources, National Park Service; Richard Moe, president of the National Trust

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for Historic Preservation; Norman Koonce, executive vice president

and CEO of American Institute of Architects.

We’ll take a 3-minute break while the next panel joins us.

We begin now with our second panel, and as you may recall from

the instruction that we gave to the first panel, there is a timing

light on the table in front of you. We have the written testimony

that you provided to us, and we appreciate the work that has gone

into the preparation of that testimony. We would ask that you provide us a 5-minute oral summary of your testimony. The lights on

the table will give you a yellow cautionary and then a 5-minute red

light.

It is the policy of this committee that all of our witnesses are

sworn in, so if you would please rise to receive the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Please let the record show that the witnesses have

responded in the affirmative.

We’ll begin this panel with Mr. John Nau, chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

STATEMENTS OF JOHN L. NAU III, CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY

COUNCIL ON HISTORIC PRESERVATION; JANET MATTHEWS,

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR CULTURAL RESOURCES, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; RICHARD MOE, PRESIDENT, THE NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION; AND NORMAN L. KOONCE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CEO,

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS

STATEMENT OF JOHN L. NAU III

Mr. NAU. Chairman Turner and members of the committee,

thank you for providing this important forum to consider how best

to treat historic properties in the devastating wake of Hurricanes

Katrina and Rita, and, as importantly, plan for future catastrophic

events.

Now, since submitting my written testimony, I was able to visit

New Orleans last Friday and tour many of the areas of destruction

within the city; meet with FEMA, State and city officials. I left

New Orleans with a sense of profound sadness, seeing firsthand

the massive extent of destruction and the immense emotional and

physical trauma suffered by the city, its historic neighborhoods

and, of course, its residents. But I also left with a sense of confidence that New Orleans will heal, and it will recover. And that

the city’s rich heritage will play a key role in this recovery.

The gulf coast region’s heritage assets are extremely important

not only as significant components of the Nation’s diverse architectural, cultural and historic record, but also as an economic asset

making essential contributions to these communities and to our

Nation. In New Orleans alone there are 18 historic districts included in the National Register of Historic Places. Heritage tourism

is a key industry that significantly impacts the economic well-being

of many of the communities affected by these storms.

As the Federal Government moves to support the recovery of the

region, Federal decisions will significantly affect the future of these

heritage assets. The National Historic Preservation Act and its section 106 process, which the ACHP oversees, assures that historic

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preservation values are considered by Federal agencies in carrying

out their activities. Thus, I fully expect that the ACHP and section

106 will have a critical role to play as the Federal agencies decide

how best to reflect historic preservation values as they carry out

their duties.

It is essential that the Federal Government promote the preservation and rehabilitation of important historic assets in this region.

Through our work with FEMA during the past 16 years on a variety of disasters, the ACHP has come to appreciate FEMA’s grasp

of historic preservation issues and its growing sophistication in

meeting its section 106 responsibility. FEMA has a record of which

it can be proud in responding to historic preservation issues in the

wake of previous natural disasters, but FEMA now recognizes that

the immense scope of Katrina and Rita’s impacts to heritage assets

pose unimagined challenges. The ACHP will be detailing staff

members to the region to work with FEMA and other Federal agencies involved in the recovery effort. Our goal is to make section 106

reviews a valuable tool to foster informed and efficient decisionmaking by Federal agencies.

Mr. Chairman, I point out that there are 12, at least 12, Federal

agencies plus FEMA in 4 States, with many local stakeholders. It’s

a scale that the National Historic Preservation Act has never previously faced. From my visit it is clear to me that we will confront

some very difficult decisions with many historic structures damaged beyond repair.

The scope of the disaster threatens to overwhelm the capability

of the State’s historic preservation officers and the ACHP staff to

meet their responsibilities under the NHPA. To meet these challenges for both the immediate crisis and future disasters, I think

we must learn from Katrina and Rita. I offer the following recommendations for a national disaster program for historic properties.

First, the Federal Government should provide adequate direct assistance to State Historic Preservation Offices for human resources,

housing, transportation and other response needs to facilitate recovery efforts and the delivery of Federal assistance. The experience and the knowledge of the SHPO is vital to any recovery effort.

Second, the Federal Government, through section 106 reviews,

should ensure historic properties and their values are adequately

considered both as irreplaceable links to the past and a valuable

economic asset for the future in any disaster recovery decisions.

Third, Congress should provide direct funding through the Historic Preservation Fund for repair and rehabilitation of damaged

historic properties. Congress should also expand the current Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credits to include owner-occupied

residential buildings as well as commercial historic properties.

Fourth, Congress should provide adequate funding to support the

programs and staffs of the SHPO offices through the Historic Preservation Fund. I can’t overemphasize how important this is. Such

funding should support the digitization of historic building inventory records for use by FEMA and its other Federal partners. In

the wake of a disaster, an effective GIS data base would provide

critical information about the location and significance of historic

properties.

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Historic properties are a valuable asset to our national identity,

and they are a means for a community to recover from the devastation brought by a major disaster. By ensuring that these properties

have a future, citizens will be able to maintain an essential connection with their community’s heritage. Again, we appreciate the subcommittee’s interest in these issues. Thank you very much, Mr.

Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Nau follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Dr. Matthews.

STATEMENT OF JANET MATTHEWS

Dr. MATTHEWS. Mr. Chairman and members of your subcommittee, thank you for your thoughtful, detailed consideration and for

the opportunity to present information on the role of the National

Park Service in working with Federal, State and local governments.

As you indicated in your remarks, Mr. Chairman, the gulf coast

has long been recognized for its centuries-old nationally significant

Native American, French Creole, Anglo American, and African

American cultures. These influences created some of the most diversely, intensely concentrated architecture in North America. It

will be months before the full extent of the damage is fully known.

Already it’s abundantly clear the storm took a heavy toll on that

heritage and the historic fabric.

Our National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

worked with FEMA, the affected States and other preservation

partners to design rapid and detailed building and site condition

and assessment forms, related tools and guidance. National Park

Service provided maps of impacted historic districts to the States.

As you mentioned earlier, the center in the ongoing work we do

through the Federal operations results in such things as the center

meeting once a week and now every other week with all parties

who were interested and able to attend to help make informed decisions about preservation and performed selective demolition only

where necessary.

The National Park Service posted technical information on the

recovery of wet objects to assist museums and private citizens in

preserving damaged objects, documents and photographs. We provided cooperative workshops regarding water-damaged collections

to over 110 museum and library professionals throughout Mississippi alone. The National Park Service Incident Management

Team fielded questions to provide technical assistance to sites and

private citizens, and the National Park Service is the lead Federal

agency in historic preservation coordinating programs, such as the

National Register of Historic Places, as you have heard repeatedly

from your testifiers.

States, Federal, and including the State Historic Preservation Offices, provided documentation and technical information and assistance services as defined, as you mentioned, by the Conventional

Wisdom, Inc., in the establishment of the State Historic Preservation Offices and the National Register of Historic Places in 1966,

40 years ago. In Louisiana alone we know that we have identified

1,286 NR listings. Those include 84 NHLs, some 52,000 significant

historical properties; in New Orleans alone, 138 listings, including

26 National Historic Landmarks, 40,800 significant historic properties. In all of Mississippi there are 1,290 listings, including 38

National Historic Landmarks, 15,000 significant historic properties.

In the 22 affected counties in Alabama, 15,892 significant historical

properties within 619 listings include 17 National Historic Landmarks.

As you have heard today repeatedly, these lie within public and

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tings. The context of all the environment, significant or not, extends and emanates from the Native American to the recent past

periods.

Throughout the disaster areas, National Park Service teams assisted parks. Over 78 National Park Service units, employees, have

volunteered their services and stand ready to respond to FEMA requests for assistance.

Under the National Response Plan, the Department of the Interior is the lead agency for the national cultural/ resource historic

properties protection part of emergency support function No. 11.

The National Park Service coordinates the cultural resources components within this hurricane season. As cooperatively agreed, the

Departments of Interior and Agriculture supply cultural resource

volunteers in response to FEMA’s requests. NPS employees have

been assigned to FEMA headquarters, the National Response Coordination Center, the Louisiana Mississippi joint field offices.

To date, the Park Service has fulfilled FEMA requests for professionals in various fields required. The National Park Service prepositioned incident management teams for rapid response. Once

the areas were secure, the Park Service deployed historic preservation specialists and museum specialists to the affected sites. Teams

assessed damage in historic structures, evacuated threatened and

flooded museum collections, stabilized historic structures, provided

archaeological assessment and salvage. These teams have completed their work, and park unit staffs are managing the long-term

recovery.

The Park Service is proud of the rapid response of employees to

this emergency in all areas of need, including historic preservation.

We stand ready to provide further response as called upon by

FEMA under the National Response Plan.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Thank you again.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Dr. Matthews. The slide show that you

brought with us certainly provided some dramatic examples of

issues that you were raising.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Matthews follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Moe.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD MOE

Mr. MOE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much, members of the

subcommittee, for holding this hearing, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the great leadership that you and Congressman Miller are

giving to the Historic Preservation Caucus. It’s an important vehicle that we all appreciate.

This hearing is important primarily because it gives due recognition, I think, to a very unique threat to historical and cultural resources in this country as we’ve never experienced before. If we

don’t get this right in the next few months and years to come, this

will not only be remembered as a great human tragedy, but it could

very well go down in history as the greatest cultural tragedy to affect this country because of the loss of significant historic resources.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, the National Trust was chartered

by this Congress in 1949 to be the Nation’s leading private preservation organization. We do a lot of different things, but among

them is dealing with disasters, and we’ve had a lot of disaster experience in the last several decades. I’m very pleased to say we

have a working relationship now with the organizations and offices

represented by both panels that you have called here today.

I have had a chance to visit both New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast in recent weeks, and as has been said, this is unbelievable damage. Both places look like war zones. They’re totally

devastated in their own ways. I have submitted some photographs

for your record, which I’d appreciate being included in the record

if it’s possible, Mr. Chairman.

Let me just say in New Orleans you have heard some descriptions, there are 20 National Register historic districts in New Orleans. They comprise half of the area of the city, and they contain

over 37,000 historic buildings. There is not a concentration of historic structures like that in any city in America. New Orleans, as

we all know, is a very special place, but it’s been estimated that

two-thirds of these structures, the historic structures, have been

damaged by wind or water or both, so there’s an enormous need.

If this city is to retain its character and to come back, there’s an

enormous need to address that. In Mississippi the need is somewhat different due to the surge and the wind, but we’ve already

lost 300 historic properties; 12,000 remain. Most of those are damaged.

The National Trust has set up the National Hurricane Recovery

Fund in order to help send in survey teams to work with local officials. We’ve opened offices in both communities. We’re offering

technical assistance on mold and other issues, and we’re already

giving stabilization grants in Mississippi and will very soon be undertaking demonstration projects with our partners in New Orleans to show how these houses, middle and low-income houses, can

be saved and brought back. And, of course, we’re partnering with

all of these organizations.

The vast majority of the historic properties in both Mississippi

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ers to bring back their properties. FEMA money, as you know, cannot be used for the restoration of private property. So we have proposed together, and I think it’s fair to say this is a consensus program, Mr. Chairman, that we have put together as preservation

communities as a whole, to urge the Congress to respond quickly

and creatively to give us some tools that we need in a very targeted

way to help property owners and community leaders to bring back

their communities.

First and by far the most urgent is the need for grants. We’ve proposed a $60 million grant program that would be administered

through the State Historic Preservation Offices that have real experience. Mississippi and Louisiana have two of the best State Historic Preservation Offices. They would have ideally a lot of discretion in how to give out these grants to fill out the gap in the financing needed for these recovery efforts, but there’s a real urgent need

for that.

We would hope also that somewhere between $2 and $5 million

of that money could be earmarked for main street revitalization.

The National Trust is very proud to have had a main street program for the last 25 years to help business communities revitalize

the downtowns and commercial areas, and there are a number of

wonderful main street communities in this area.

We also propose some changes to the historic tax credit that have

been discussed: One, to extend it to include the owners of historic

homes, and also to provide for some waivers and new provisions,

most of which are fairly technical in nature, but which would make

it easier to use the tax credit.

I would just say that in answer to Mr. Dent’s question earlier,

the credits and the grants really are complementary to each other.

In a sense they serve different constituencies, but they are really

complementary in that the owners of low-income homes who find

it very difficult to access the tax credit, but they could use the

grants more easily, where as you go up the income scale, it’s more

useful to use the tax credits. In any case, this is a variety of tools,

Mr. Chairman, we propose that we ask your serious consideration

for. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moe follows:]

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STATEMENT OF NORMAN L. KOONCE

Mr. KOONCE. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, good

morning to you. My name is Norman Koonce. I’m the executive vice

president and CEO of the American Institute of Architects. We

greatly value the opportunity to appear before you here this morning for this very important subcommittee deliberation on significant historic preservation issues in the wake of these hurricanes.

The American Institute of Architects represents 76,000-plus

members, representing a large majority of the Nation’s architects,

with their collective staff, their firms professionally dedicated to

creating and preserving environments that elevate and enrich the

human experience, exceed a third of a million people. Their interest

as well as that of the public everywhere is focused on what is happening and what will happen in New Orleans and the Mississippi

gulf coast and south Louisiana.

Something has come up since we presented our paper to you in

writing that I think we should report on, and that is at the request

of Lieutenant—excuse me, Louisiana Governor Blanco and with the

encouragement by Lieutenant Governor Landrieu as well, the AIA

is organizing and managing the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding

Conference that will be convened November 10th–12th in New Orleans. We’ll be joined by a very strong group of sponsors including

the American Planning Association, the National Trust for Historic

Preservation, the American Society of Civil Engineers and others

who can address the issues that will be facing those who design the

solutions in the near future.

The purpose of the conference is to develop appropriate principles

for use by each political jurisdiction to use in designing, planning

and implementing redevelopment efforts. One major emphasis will

be the appropriate stewardship of our architectural heritage in all

of those areas, as it should be, and as that pertains to the discussion here this morning.

I’d like to mention that we would be pleased to respond further

to the issue of this conference in a Q-and-A period that follows in

the event that you have additional interest in that.

Concerning the why of preserving our historic past, I would say

that the largest, most dense concentration of historic structures in

America exists in New Orleans, characterized by scholar Pearce

Lewis as the inevitable city on an impossible site. What a contradiction, but we all recognize that. It’s a city that developed

under many flags, ruled at least once by Spain, France, Great Britain and, of course, the United States. It was considered inevitable

because of its strategic location that just can’t be abandoned, obviously. But there’s nothing else like it.

Consider, too, that each of the other areas that have been treated

so severely by the hurricanes convey their own cultural identities

which are very important to them and to all of us. In fact, anthropologists tell us today that nothing better expresses a culture of a

civilization than its architecture. It speaks to how people lived and,

even more importantly, what values were important to them. It is

those values that we must preserve and we must recognize in the

process.

We believe, along with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, that the Federal Government should provide those property

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owners who have been so crucially affected with a package of

grants and tax incentives to leverage local dollars and attract outside investments that will enable the healthy and respectful building efforts that are required. We believe it is both affordable and

greatly needed.

Details are involved or included in the written testimony that we

provided earlier. We’d be glad to discuss those more if necessary,

but I think that Mr. Moe has done a good job in presenting those

details.

Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, as a native of Louisiana, and an architect with the Committee for Historic Preservation, and one with the responsibility to represent the interests of

all of our architects, we all thank you for focusing on this vital national issue.

I’d like to close with a more personal note, sharing an example

of the influence that historic architecture has had on each one of

us in this room, whether we know it or not. Dr. Jonas Salk, the

developer of the vaccine for polio, became a personal friend. He

shared his experience with me that as he was discovering or attempting to discover the vaccine in the mid-1950’s, he encountered

one big problem after another, so he decided to take a respite from

that work and to go to the 13th-century village, the place where

the people train to become ministers in the 13th-century village in

Assisi. He was distancing himself from the frustration he felt.

He shared this very important finding. He said the spirituality

of the architecture in that setting was of such great inspiration to

him, he was able to do intuitive thinking far beyond any he had

ever done before. Under that influence, he said, I was able to intuitively design the research that resulted in the polio vaccine. He

was indeed correct. We owe a debt of gratitude to the architecture

in Assisi for that inspiration provided to him.

He also provided a favorite admonition to us often; he said, we

must all seek to become good ancestors for future generations. You

have and we all have an opportunity to become good ancestors

today by properly addressing the problem that relates to our historic past and our future. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Koonce follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. I appreciate your time with us here today, and recognizing that all of our panelists began their discussion with their

personal tragedies of Katrina, and recognizing that historic preservation is a forward-thinking issue and obligation after we initially

turn to the needs of the individuals impacted by the tragedy.

A lot of the discussion in all of the written data that we have

deals with issues of administration, deals with issues of existing

programs or proposed programs, and some recommendations as to

what we need to do. Normally whenever we have a hearing, we

structure it first where the national experts or the representatives

of the national governments speak first. In this instance, we flipped

the normal structure of the hearing process so that we could hear

from the people who were local, on the ground, facing these issues,

and then we’ll hear the national perspective from our national institutions and our national government so that you would have an

opportunity to respond then to the information that you heard.

When you prepared your written testimony, you might have been

aware of some of the things that they were going to be saying, but

having sat through the testimony of the first panel, I’m certain

that each of you had some thoughts or ideas that related to what

your proposals were, what your recommendations were, but also

something you might want to embellish as a result of their comments.

So I want to ask each of you to, if you would, in an open question

give us some of your thoughts with respect to what you heard from

the first panel, some of the things that you think were of value and

of importance that we need to highlight, and how their comments

relate to some of the things that you were speaking of before us

today.

I’ll begin with you, Mr. Nau.

Mr. NAU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was struck by something

the Lieutenant Governor said when he was asked about the 106

process when he said it’s probably not a process problem, that it’s

more a resource problem. And I reflect back to the discussions I

had Friday when I was in New Orleans and with the FEMA and

State and city people, and if you can picture a funnel, and in that

funnel are all these 12 or more Federal agencies, the States involved, and where that funnel comes to a very narrow opening is

the State Historic Preservation Office.

All of those 106 reviews have to funnel through that one spot,

and I can’t imagine any State that has staffed up and planned for

this level of disaster. And I would say from the Federal agency

standpoint, the efficiency of being able to address all of the 106 reviews, whether it’s the Corps of Engineers, FEMA has to do every

one, Park Service, everyone is going to have to go through these

106.

I think it should be the focus of the Federal effort right now to

try to widen and put resources into the SHPO offices; obviously

Louisiana, Mississippi, some to Alabama and some to Texas because of Rita’s impact in the Beaumont, Port Arthur and east

Texas area.

So my big takeaway from what I saw Friday and what I heard

from the Lieutenant Governor, I echo what he said, it’s not a process problem. That process has worked very, very well for 40 years.

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It’s about resources. And if we don’t address that, then I would

suggest to you that the efficiency of the process is going to bog

down, and then there will be cries against the 106 process, when,

in fact, it’s simply going to be a resource issue. Thank you.

Dr. MATTHEWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would harken back to three or four things I heard very briefly.

First is the value issue. Mr. Koonce, sitting to my left, grew up in

Louisiana where the National Center for Preservation Technology

and Training occurred. He cited Jonas Salk’s influence in a monastery. He and at least one other very distinguished leader in historic preservation architecture grew up in this little town; probably

not an accident that they among many others became professionals

in this field because they were impacted by the place they came

from.

As you carry this forward from knowing on the ground the grassroots influence, the long, long reaction of the kind of impact of living in a place where you connect and where the environment connects you to something that just happens because you’re there, I

would suspect you have convened this subcommittee hearing in

part because you know this really matters.

New Orleans is unique, is distinct. Forty years ago you all

passed, your predecessors did, the National Historic Preservation

Act, which established the SHPOs that John talked about, the 106

process, the identification of significant resources. That identification made it possible in this terrible crisis to go straight to those

targeted areas. Whether they were significant or not, they defined

the character of the places; the humble, the proud, the grand, the

small, the neighborhood, the grandmothers’ back houses, the

houses we saw washed off foundations, which might be put back

if they’re not demolished first. The National Historic Preservation

Act as defined by Congress in 1966 has made it possible 40 years

later in a crisis no one anticipated to go in with a target, a target

to use as a guide. The 106 process requires that they be taken into

consideration.

I heard on the radio this morning that children in New Orleans

last night went trick-or-treating; some of them went as mold. Did

you hear that? They’re so impacted by this mold growing on everything that some of them last night dressed as mold.

Second, following up on John, the economic benefit is that in

Florida when I was State Historic Preservation Officer, we solicited

proposals for a grant and found that $4.22 billion a year came directly back to the State of Florida in direct State revenues based

on heritage tourism, historic sites, and everything that generates,

and that is probably a lot more than you wanted to know about

what I was thinking.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that opportunity.

Mr. MOE. Mr. Chairman, what I heard from the earlier panel

was what we’ve been hearing from these organizations and their

spokesmen for months now. One of the things we do at the National Trust is to try to convene the State and local partners of the

preservation movement in both the public and private sector as

well as our national partners, and we came very quickly to a consensus, as I think you heard today, about the need for a Federal

response. And it was very easy to start out using the example of

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the historic tax credit because, as has been said, that’s such a successful vehicle. Its been responsible for the private investment of

$38 billion in different projects in this country the last 20-some

years.

Where we had to be more creative was on the grant side. It used

to be—when we went through the Mississippi River floods in 1993

and the Northridge earthquake the next year, FEMA had a discretionary fund that we were able to tap into for historic resources

very easily and very effectively. Obviously the needs in those two

instances and others were more limited, but somewhere along the

line that fund disappeared. Therefore, we saw the need, particularly for a disaster of this scale, for a new major congressionally

authorized grant program, because there is simply no substitute for

getting dollars quickly into the hands of property owners to fill in

the gap of financing this recovery.

The other thing that I’ve learned was from Mitch Landrieu, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. I participated in a program with him

some weeks ago in New Orleans, and he, I think has very effectively put together a program of using culture as a means of recovery in New Orleans. There is no city in America like New Orleans,

not simply because of its architecture, but because of its unique

culture. Jazz, gumbo, and architecture, that’s what makes New Orleans. And that is the basis for the very effective historic tourism

program that they have.

And so it is not only important culturally to bring these properties back, but it is important for the economy of New Orleans to

get the tourism economy going again.

Finally, one of the things that I learned from my visits to both

areas was that FEMA has been doing—in New Orleans has been

doing a very effective job on the historic preservation front. They

have very able leadership in the historic preservation front, and

we’ve been working very closely with them on the 106 issues and

so forth, which is critical to authorizing demolition by the city because they can’t do it without Federal funds.

One of the things I found in Mississippi was a great need for

more FEMA engineers to help go out and do the surveys. There is

a critical need for engineers to speed up this process so that a lot

of these damaged properties don’t disappear.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Koonce.

Mr. KOONCE. One of the things that we’ve heard is that there are

so many agencies in this country that can have a very positive effect on the outcome of this recovery effort, and I think we should

all be extremely proud of the amount of intense effort and resources that are being put into that effort. They need help, and

that was one of the things that I heard during the earlier presentation. We need to find a way to empower them to do what they’re

designed to do, capable of doing and want to do.

There are more than just agencies who need to be equipped, however; there are the political jurisdictions, there are the individuals.

Everybody has been so devastated by the overwhelming losses that

took place here. And the thing that I think I also heard in most

of the discussions is that leadership is required. All of the business

entities and citizens, the political jurisdictions, are not going to

magically start working in concert because there is a lot of talk

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about it. There are so many diverse solutions in the people’s minds

that we should go ahead and implement immediately because it is

what needs to happen.

But there is not just one solution, there are many solutions that

need to be developed. Not all those solutions that are being discussed today I think you could consider to be totally good. So there

is an obvious reflex that needs to be addressed. How do you address it? It is, independent of the American of Institute of Architects, the worst thing we can do is for everyone to suddenly just

rebuild everything that they had before without consideration to

whether it was the best solution then. I’m not talking in terms of

the historic architecture. That which has endured for many, many

years has earned its place in the environment of every city. But everything about our city has not been exactly as they should have

been, and we need to give careful attention as to how we go about

rebuilding, accommodating the interest of the business community,

the citizens, a place for housing, a place to bring together people

in the central business districts and to create more sustainable, livable, healthy and safe communities.

I think that what we need to have is some conceptual guidepost,

something that says here’s the manner in which we go about addressing the problem. Now, that doesn’t give you individual answers to every community’s needs, every city’s needs or every

State’s needs, obviously, but it does give a guidepost around which

decisions can begin to be made that will yield the greatest benefit

in the future.

I guess when we start thinking about this rush to do something,

we begin to be admonished by the statement, if we don’t have time

to do it right, when are we going to have time to do it over? And

the same thing applies to the money; if we don’t have the money

to do it right, when are we going to find the money to do it over?

So the admonition should be to all of us that we do it right, as

right as we possibly can the first go-around, so we don’t have these

guessing efforts to contend with.

Mr. TURNER. That’s an excellent saying. Thank you, Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Now Mr. Koonce, I noticed during your testimony you made reference to Dr. Pierce Lewis. You made a reference to Dr. Pierce

Lewis in your remarks, from Penn State, the geographer. I thought

you quoted him. He was my professor at Penn State University. I

thought that was interesting. He was a great geographer, and I’m

sure he had interesting comments on the city of New Orleans and

why it exists where it does. Very interested man.

My question to you, though, Mr. Koonce is this: If the legislative

package that you propose is successful, it’s going to take time for

these Federal grants to get on the ground. Will they be likely too

late for stabilization efforts?

Mr. KOONCE. I’m having difficulty hearing you. I’m sorry.

Mr. DENT. If the legislative package that you have proposed here

today, if it’s successful, it is going to take time for those grants to

get on the ground. Will they likely be too late for stabilization efforts?

Mr. KOONCE. I’m not sure that it’s going to be so quickly solved

that it would not be possible for the tax credits and the other

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issues that you may be promoting to be used. Maybe there is some

effort that could be exerted in the interim that would help people

to make decisions, particularly when property ownership is a problem, that they can’t meet the demands all at this point in time. I

really don’t have an answer to that.

I guess it’s the prerogative of architects to look at the longerterm solution, and we will look to those who have the knowledge

of the disbursement of money from the Federal Government to

come up with a manner that can get it into the hands at the earliest possible time.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Moe, a question for you. You mentioned a few mo- ments ago that about $3.8 billion in private investment has been

leveraged by the historic preservation tax credit.

Mr. MOE. It was $38 billion.

Mr. DENT. $38 billion; I’m sorry. I thought I heard $3.8.

OK. Are you aware of any studies indicating how much private

investment could be leveraged by extending these tax credits to private homeowners?

Mr. MOE. No. We don’t have specific recent information. I think

there are some studies that we undertook some years ago, and we

would be happy to provide those to you. But there is no question

but that if the experience of the existing tax credit is any indication, there is a very high leveraging ratio. I can’t give you a specific

number.

But what is so attractive about the existing tax credits is that

it usually is the last piece that’s needed to fill in the financing gap

for these redevelopment projects. And it’s an indispensable piece,

because what they’ve done is they’ve basically tapped out the private markets.

I think the same concept would apply with homeowners, where

they have some insurance, they have some mortgage ability, some

other means, but they don’t have the total amount needed to restore their houses. So I think the same principle would apply.

Mr. Dent, if I may respond to a question briefly that you asked

Mr. Koonce. If the Congress authorized the grants immediately,

there is no question they could be dispensed in very short order because the State Historic Preservation Offices are equipped, ready,

and manned to dispense these grants. Our fear is that the Congress may not act until December, and hopefully they will act, but

not before then. There is some risk that there will not be enough

stabilization money between now and then to save some of these

at-risk properties. The National Trust has set a goal of raising at least $1 million,

hopefully a lot more, most of which we will be giving out in the

form of stabilization grants and pilot projects in both Mississippi

and New Orleans, but this will not address the full need of stabilization. So there is a real urgency behind the need for these

grants.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. To expand on Mr. Dent’s question, one of the important opportunities that rebuilding the gulf area presents to us is

to look at some of the economic development tools, the urban redevelopment tools, historic redevelopment tools that we’ve all talked

about but have not yet been able to implement, that we could on

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a pilot basis place in the gulf area and determine their effectiveness. The historic homeowner assistance tax credit has been one

that many people have discussed. It’s in the recommendations from

Mr. Koonce in the Historic Trust, and you were speaking about it

briefly, Mr. Moe. I wanted to open it broadly to other members of

the panel to talk about the opportunity of the historic homeowners

assistance tax credits.

And I’m going to begin with you, Mr. Koonce, since you have a

specific proposal that’s outlined in your recommendations. We are

talking about the historic homeowner assistance tax credit recommendation that’s in your comments. If you can talk about the

specifics as to how your recommendation, you would see this working. And then if the other members could talk about how this could

fill a need that currently is not present and might be an economic

development tool and, again, something that we could try on a pilot

basis that we see as a need throughout many communities in the

country.

Mr. Koonce.

Mr. Koonce, I know you are having difficulty hearing us. In your

testimony you begin in the section dealing with historic preservation disaster assistance package of outlining several elements, one

of which would be the historic homeowners tax credit.

Mr. KOONCE. This package is put together as a partnership between the National Trust Historic Preservation and the American

Institute of Architects. I have been involved to a greater extent in

looking at the conference that I mentioned to you a moment ago,

but I am confident that my good friend, Mr. Moe, is going to be

able to address that much better than I. So I think in the interest

of expediency I would defer to him.

Mr. MOE. Mr. Chairman, the proposal that we’ve put before the

Congress is for a 30 percent credit against qualified expenditures

for the restoration of historic homes. This would provide a very significant gap in the funding that I talked about earlier.

What is unanswered here, and which we must deal with, is the

administration of these tax credits. We do have an existing infrastructure in both the National Park Service and in the State Historic Preservation Offices for administering the existing tax credit,

and that’s assumed by everyone, I think, that same infrastructure

would be used for these credits. However, because the amounts are

so much lower, we have to take a real look at the transaction costs

involved and whether or not they’re realistic and reasonable in the

context of the work being done. So we don’t have all the answers

there, but we hope that we can get a focus to answer those questions. But there is no question that it can be uniquely helpful.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Nau, Ms. Matthews, either one of you wish to

comment on historic homeowners tax credits?

Dr. MATTHEWS. I can only comment that the administration

hasn’t taken a position on the tax credit and set of waivers, so I

can’t comment at this time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. NAU. The ACHP endorses this concept because we feel that

it would be an effective way to stimulate the rehabilitation of these

historic owner-occupied properties; trying to predict what the economic impact of that is, I think, is what Dick has said is very difVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:56 Apr 24, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00134 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\25541.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ficult. But based on that, that’s been in the available commercial

historic properties, it only says that success breeds success. And

this kind of a concept I think provides a hand to private property

owners that says the government is with you if you’re willing to go

back and rebuild it and preserve it. So I applaud the National

Trust and AIA for taking this lead. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Koonce, in your written testimony and in your

presentation, you talked of the issue of the conference that’s upcoming. It certainly is a wonderful opportunity to garner resources,

specifically at the issues of what needs to be done with respect to

the gulf area and historic preservation.

What are some of the issues that you expect to be highlighted

and to come out of the conference that might be helpful to us in

the future?

Mr. KOONCE. Thank you. That is more in my area of knowledge,

which I can——

Mr. TURNER. I thought I’d help you out.

Mr. KOONCE. Thank you. Well, you might say that there has

been a totally separate effort in the gulf coast of Mississippi that

has been produced by the Congress of New Urbanism and some of

their people who subscribe to those philosophies of design of communities. They have obviously done a thorough job there, and are

to be commended. I’m sure that one solution is not going to fit all

of the communities there in Mississippi and our gulf coast.

On the other hand, the conference that is to be conducted in just

10 days I guess, or less, beginning in New Orleans, is the conference for recovery and rebuilding in Louisiana. So the outlook is

very diverse there, looking at not only the city of New Orleans, but

other smaller communities, and those that are almost isolated that

are down on the very gulf coast like Cameron and other cities.

What will happen is that we will convene a group of very qualified people in a number of different areas of expertise. There will

be architects, engineers, there will be planners, there will be historians, there will be economists, there will be psychologists. There

will be those who can orchestrate discussions of great intensity

while recording electronically and enabling opportunities for people

to respond electronically to all of the issues that are on their mind.

The audience or the group of participants for that conference will

be leaders from every jurisdiction, every community, every city,

every parish that’s affected in the State; they will come to represent the interests of their own section of Louisiana and to be informed about what there is that they can take home with them.

The process will be on the first day to discuss a number of very

important principles and designs considering elements of a design

and planning of their communities that must be given strong consideration, and looking at the characteristics of solutions that can

be derived in each of those cases. All of the folks will be seated

around tables, some 500 to 600 participants, able to respond immediately to their thoughts about the applicability of those principles

in their own communities.

So we will be able to help them record what they generally are

thinking throughout the entire conference.

In addition, however, to giving the general principles on the first

day by qualified experts and having feedback, on the second day we

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will be bringing people into their own characteristic groups, having

them discuss small-city issues among small-city representatives.

Larger-city issues will be, in like manner, separated from the entire discussion.

Toward the end of the conference there will be recaps, of course,

every day. But there will be a final one that says here’s what we’ve

learned about the redesign of your cities, of your communities, of

your parishes. There will be some folks then that can give the picture about how they will be able to work with those who are commissioned to actually lead the planning and redesign of their communities, letting them be good clients because they will know what

is important to them based on the 3 days of discussion that they’ve

had in a very intense sharing of the best principles for creating

communities that are sustainable, that are healthy, that are safe,

that are properly integrated with all the other elements of the communities.

So we are trusting that those 500, 600 people, who will be a tremendous core for good design, to leave that place responding to the

concepts that have been mentioned and created and substantiated

and agreed to by them as the elements of the relationship that will

exist between them and the firms or the groups of people who are

establishing the responsibility for redesign of their communities.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Although I have a background in law,

my background in the legal profession is not one of a litigator. Litigators have a greater sensitivity to the issue of a transcript and

what the final document that comes out of a hearing looks like.

Having done now, this year, chaired the subcommittee, I’m getting

a greater sensitivity to the issue of a transcript and what’s in it

and what is not, and having looked at some of these hearings and

reflected on what we had hoped would be in the text of the hearing

by the people who have testified.

Because of that, I want to give each of you an opportunity to give

us, if you will, a commercial. We have, from each of you, the greatest resources of national experts before us on the issue of historic

preservation. And one thing I don’t want to have missed in the

transcript when we turn back to this is the issue of why is this

issue today important; why is it important that we even look to

what we need to be doing in historic preservation in the face of this

large natural and national disaster? So if you would each take a

moment and provide us that text example of why this is important

to us as a country.

Mr. Nau.

Mr. NAU. I think that’s the most important question when you

address historic preservation issues is why are you going to preserve them? In one context, it’s about heritage, it’s about community values. If you look at whether it’s the National Park System

or county and State-owned assets, it is about the accumulated experiences of who we are as a people. You only are able to feel that

by having a sense of place. And if these places are destroyed, you

lose the ability to connect to that accumulation of values. That’s

the hard one to get our arms around.

The easy one for me as a businessman is the economic development aspects of heritage tourism that many of the witnesses today

have talked about. There is—someone in the first panel said this

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is ground zero for heritage and cultural assets. The tourism industry there was not all about just gumbo, it was about these places

all across that gulf coast. And to walk away from the preservation

of these assets is to walk away from an industry also hit with the

oil and gas. The petrochemical industries were hurt. We would not

walk away from those industries. And here I would submit to you

the economic development, the future of heritage tourism is in the

collective hands of the States, the Federal Government and the cities and the citizens. It’s economic development as much as it is the

soft side of values and community history. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Ms. Matthews.

Dr. MATTHEWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ditto to everything he said. On top of which, as a historian, the

National Historic Sites Act of 1935, passed by you all, was established for the purpose of benefiting, inspiring, and educating the

Nation as a whole. As a result, we have 2,500 National Historic

Landmarks, many of which lie in the area we’ve talked about this

morning and you have so generously given time to talk about this

morning.

The 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, which I think of as

the blue collar Congress, the Congress largely educated by the G.I.

bill as the first people in their families who had the opportunity

to go to college, and came back and said I think neighborhoods are

important. As a Congress we think that back yards are important,

we think that the context of history is important, which is what

we’ve talked about all morning, the context of a very neat place in

a dire situation because of a catastrophic event.

The 1966 act resulted in 80,000 National Register listings which

represent 1.4 million properties. So our job is to carry forward for

future generations the sense of what has kept many of us, thanks

to your generous use of your time, in this room for a long time,

things that really matter to us, and if we can put a face on our own

minds and experiences and those of all we know regarding a sense

of place in this great Nation.

So while the children who dressed last night as mold—that

grows on wet buildings, that can be handled properly with professional application—well, the children who dressed up as mold last

night, and the little girl on the same radio report who put a blue

tarp over her Barbie dollhouse because she wanted it to be protected and not demolished, will those children walk away 15 years

from now with a sense of a Nation that could rebuild a city or the

sense of a Nation that could not?

Mr. MOE. Mr. Chairman, I think there are at least three primary

reasons why it’s important, if not essential, to save these historic

places. No. 1, it does represent our shared heritage. It’s obviously

an important part of the heritage of New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast. But this is America’s heritage, too. It tells an

important part about who we were, where we’ve come from, and

hopefully where we’re going. The heritage is enormously important.

As has been said, it is also important because of the economic development opportunities it provides in terms of employment, in

terms of the overall recovery effort, and especially in terms of the

heritage tourism opportunities that it presents.

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And third, it’s important because of the concept of community.

Too often, I’m afraid, preservationists are accused of focusing on

the need to save buildings without the human dimension. Well,

here’s an instance where the human dimension is front and center

and must be front and center. All of these buildings that are damaged are somebody’s homes, small businesses, places of worship.

These people need these places to maintain and come back to their

communities. If not, those communities are gone. In New Orleans,

for example, 18 of the 20 historic districts are what I would call

vernacular neighborhood districts; for the most part, middle and

lower-income neighborhoods filled with Creole cottages, shotgun

houses, corner stores. These are the places that are in the greatest

need of assistance, and that is because they are essential to what

the residents of those communities view as their communities.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Koonce.

Mr. KOONCE. The American Institute of Architects and some of

its related partners is on the brink, I think, of discovering some

amazing things about the power of architecture in each of our lives.

Our surroundings, they are determining—the newer scientists who

are working with us are—that surroundings have a great deal to

do with our sense of well-being, our cognitive skills, our ability to

do creative and conceptual thinking, and to do conflict resolution

and negotiation are all very important issues. It has to do with longevity of our life.

It’s impossible to say at this point in time that there is a direct

correlation between historic architecture and that which is not, and

this theory that’s being projected. But it is appropriate to say that

we have historic buildings because they have endured for a reason.

Many other buildings have been built in the past that have been

just simply done away with because they did not have this ability

to inspire, or they did not meet the needs of accommodation that

were prescribed in their design. Subsequently, I think we need to

think about the reason we still have them. They do represent all

of those interests in our culture, in our values and our past that

Mr. Moe mentioned just a moment ago. But it’s important to think

about those buildings that have survived because of the effect they

have on each one of us in our daily life, and I think that’s a very

important criteria.

The other thing is that it was mentioned earlier that we do have

process, and that’s not the big issue, and I agree with that; but

there is such a mad rush in some corners to just go ahead and tear

down and rebuild, that if we don’t provide the revenues or the

money that is necessary to properly invoke the processes that we

have, I’m afraid we will be losing some things in the interim that

we really will regret having lost.

We need to think in terms of private ownership as well. A lot of

the privately owned historic buildings are going to be more difficult

for individuals to restore and to maintain than those that are publicly owned or owned by large associations. So it’s another issue

that it’s important for us to act quickly on this entire issue.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Well, before we adjourn, I want to give anyone who has anything

they would like to add to the record or has a question that we have

not asked that they wanted to contribute, to give any closing reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:56 Apr 24, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\25541.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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marks. It is really not required that anybody provide closing remarks, but at this time, if you did have any items that you wanted

to bring to our attention or include in the record, I wanted to give

you that opportunity. Does anyone have anything they want to add

before we adjourn?

Mr. MOE. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to thank you for your

holding this hearing and raising the visibility of these issues because we hope what these panels have had to say will have an impact on the jurisdictional committees that will be considering some

of these issues going forward. Thank you very much.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Nau.

Mr. NAU. Let me echo Mr. Moe. And one thought that I would

like to put on the record: Right now FEMA does not have the ability to fund either the SHPO offices or bring some of these resources

to bear. Mr. Moe referenced that earlier in the grants program. We

would recommend that you all really look into that and reconsider

it. They’re on the ground, they have the ability and knowledge,

whether it’s this disaster or the next one. They need to be able to

try to bring those resources to bear quickly, and right now they

can’t do it. But thank you for your leadership in this, sir.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. That was an excellent point concerning

FEMA’s authority.

I would like to thank each of you for participating today and

thank you for your continued efforts as you impact our Nation on

this important issue. And I’d like to thank my colleagues for participating today.

The National Preservation Act of 1966 put in place a workable

infrastructure for Federal, State, and local governments and nongovernmental organizations to partner in historic preservation efforts, but as we have heard today, more can be done. Today’s witnesses testified, along with their recommendations, on how Congress can adapt that infrastructure to better respond to Katrina

and future disasters. This will provide us invaluable information as

we make key policy decisions on this subject.

In the event that there may be additional questions, the record

will remain open for a period of 2 weeks for submission of additional questions. We would appreciate if you would be kind enough

to answer them if we receive them from members.

With that, we thank you all, and we’ll be adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 12:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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