City of Rapid City Preservation Plan Phase 1 Update

Introduction: "In 1975, the City of Rapid City created the Rapid City created the Rapid City Historic Preservation Commission (RCHPC), tasking it with identifying and managing the community's historic resources in concert with appropriate state and federal guidelines, standards, and laws. The RCHPC commissioned the city's first Historic Context Planning Document, which was completed and released in 1989. Amended to reflect successive updates to the RCHPC's Comprehensive Plan or evolutions in the statewide historical contexts produced by the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), the Context Planning Document has remained substantially unchanged for thirty years. Given the growth of Rapid City, changes in the economy and character of the community, and the evolution of the city's built environment over the last three decades, as well as the need to address future planning concerns, the RCHPC undertook a major revision of the Historic Context Planning Document in 2019. This report is not intended as a stand-alone asset. Rather, it has been developed to be used in concert with the RCHPC's updated, 2019 Comprehensive Plan. Working together, these two documents build upon the previous plans to help the RCHPC identify and preserve historic properties, promote the value of history and historic preservation to the Rapid City community, and integrate its work with broader municipal goals outlined in the Rapid City's Comprehensive Plan (2014), Downtown Area Master Plan (2016), and Cultural Resources Plan (2016). This report is designed to comply with state and federal rules pertaining to historic preservation. It also seeks to supplement existing framework and help the RCHPC define a broader, more inclusive approach to the preservation and interpretation of historic places and properties in Rapid City. To achieve this goal, this document relies upon the existing formal definitions of historic properties provided by the National Parks Service. But it also draws on new approaches to historic preservation and heritage planning to identify and assess landscapes, waterscapes, and other pieces of Rapid City's cultural mosaic that - although not necessarily eligible for historic preservation as traditionally practiced - contribute substantially to the community's history and culture." Project funding was provided in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant to the South Dakota State Historical Society administered by the State, Tribal, Local Plans and Grants division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (grant number P18AF00022).

City of Rapid City Preservation Plan Phase 1 Update

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