Executive Summary: Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation in Florida

Center for Governmental Responsibility, University of Florida Levin College of Law; Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers State University

From general findings: "While the numbers found in this report are admittedly conservative, several conclusions can be made about the final results, including: Historic preservation creates jobs in Florida. More than 123,000 jobs were generated in Florida from historic preservation activities during 2000. The major areas of job creation include the manufacturing sector, retail trade sector, services sector, and construction sector. Historic preservation makes a substantial contribution to tax collections for Florida state and local governments. More than $657 million in state and local taxes were generated from spending on historic preservation activities during 2000. Visitors to Florida spend billions of dollars while visiting historic sites. More than $3.7 billion was spent in Florida by tourists who visited historic sites. The tourists are lured by Florida’s historic sites, historic museums, state parks, and archeological sites. There are more than 1,400 Florida listings in the National Register of Historic Places and more than 135,000 historic structures and archeological sites in the Florida Master Site File of historic sites. Public funds invested in historic preservation grants are matched many times over with private funds in local rehabilitation projects. Since 1983, state historic preservation grants have been awarded to projects in every Florida county, representing 2,751 projects and a state investment of $212.1 million, which the Secretary of State’s office estimates is more than doubled by leveraged public and private funds in these local communities. The Main Street Program creates a greater sense of place in Florida communities. Since the Main Street Program began in Florida in 1985, eighty Florida communities have leveraged a state investment of $4 million into partnerships between private investors and local governments. This investment became a total public/private investment in these communities of $486.5 million (as reported by May, 2002) designated to improve the downtowns of these communities. Historic preservation helps to maintain property values in Florida. In an examination of the assessed values of mainly residential property in eighteen historic districts and twenty-five comparable non-historic districts throughout Florida, there was no case where historic district designation depressed the property values. In fact in at least fifteen cases, property in historic districts appreciated greater than comparable, targeted non-historic districts." Funding was provided in part by a 2001 Historic Preservation Fund grant administered by the Florida State Historic Preservation Office (project number FL-01-21) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Executive Summary: Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation in Florida

Collections