Grant to let city start on preservation plan

EL DORADO — The Historic District Commission has been awarded a $49,049 grant to begin implementing a proposed citywide historic preservation plan.

That proposal will soon be presented to the City Council.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program had initially awarded a $42,000 Certified Local Government grant to the city to develop a comprehensive historic preservation plan.

The city provided a $10,000 match from the El Dorado Works tax.

The grant also covered other components of Historic District Commission operations — including the executive director’s salary, training for commissioners and membership fees into historic preservation organizations.

In April 2019, the commission accepted a $46,574 bid from the Lakota Group, an Illinois-based urban design firm, to draft the preservation plan.

Lakota submitted a final draft July 14.

The Lakota team is awaiting final notes from the commission and Arkansas Historic Preservation Program before creating hard and digital copies of the plan.

After the commission and program sign off on the draft, the plan will then be presented to the City Council for approval.

The biggest portion of the new grant — $42,500 — will be used to start surveying the Mellor Park residential area and Forest Lawn/ Eastridge subdivision to determine its eligibility for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

The areas are just north of the Mahony and Murphy-Hill residential historic districts.

Elizabeth Eggleston, executive director of El Dorado’s Historic District Commission, said the Mellor Park area includes five distinct subdivisions that will be a part of the survey, as well as small section of the McKinney subdivision and some “un-platted” areas.

She said the Eastridge subdivision is congruent to a residential historic district two houses were designed by the late architect E. Fay Jones of Fayetteville, who spent part of his childhood in El Dorado.

Eggleston said the survey will cover more than 300 properties, which, if added to the National Register, could qualify for state and national tax credits for exterior improvements.

Eggleston said once the commission receives official paperwork for the grant, she will compile a list of National Register survey contractors and send out requests for qualifications.

“It will take about a month to receive letters of intent from prospective contractors. After that, I will make a presentation to the [historic district] commissioners and let them select the contractor they’d like to do the work,” Eggleston said.

Upon completion of that phase of the preservation project, Eggleston said the Historic District Commission will turn its attention to the Retta Brown neighborhood, another area that has been recommended in the Lakota plan.

“The fact that we were able to apply for a second round of funding in this grant cycle was a direct result of the completion of the citywide preservation plan,” Eggleston said. “The Lakota Group had made certain recommendations, and the one we could utilize right away was the National Register surveys.”

“It will take about a month to receive letters of intent from prospective contractors. After that, I will make a presentation to the [historic district] commissioners and let them select the contractor they’d like to do the work.” — Elizabeth Eggleston, executive director of El Dorado’s Historic District Commission