The Economic Benefits of Historic Preservation in Michigan, Technical Report

Clarion Associates, LLC

From executive summary: "Historic preservation activities add value to the lives of all Michigan residents. These activities, including historic rehabilitation, heritage tourism, and historic designation programs, are important and cost-effective tools that may be used to leverage significant amounts of private capital, create local jobs, and stimulate a wide range of related economic activities. Preservation not only promotes an increased appreciation of the past; it is often a key feature of successful community planning and economic development. In March 2001, the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, Inc. (MHPN) with the assistance of the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), initiated this project to examine the economic benefits of historic preservation in Michigan in order to 'define, document, and quantify the benefits of historic preservation on jobs, business, tourism, income,` property values, taxes, and community.' The project resulted in three reports. This Technical Report summarizes the methodologies used, data collected, and analytical techniques. A summary report provides a succinct overview of all project findings. The third document focuses on the Michigan state rehabilitation tax credit. These publications document key economic aspects of historic preservation activities, including historic rehabilitation expenditures, the relationship between historic district review programs and property values, and the economic impacts of heritage tourism. This Technical Report also suggests several preservation benchmarks, or indicators that may be used to track the progress of statewide historic preservation activities. This project focuses on only a few, selected types of historic preservation activities, generally those that have occurred under the auspices of established preservation programs. This research does not venture into less accessible, but still economically significant, data collection areas (such as lodging taxes in historic hotels or historic rehabilitations that have not utilized rehabilitation tax credit programs). Also, by focusing solely on dollars generated, this study does not take into account those preservation activities that cannot be easily quantified, such as the work of the thousands of dedicated volunteers throughout Michigan. Given the large size and diversity of the state, examples throughout this report have been chosen to represent the variety of Michigan's communities and regions. All information compiled in this report is intended to be applicable to preservation efforts throughout the entire state." Funding for this project was provided in part through a 2001 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Michigan Historic Preservation Network (project number MI-01-047) administered by the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office (grant number 26-01-16422) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Economic Benefits of Historic Preservation in Michigan, Technical Report

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