Neary-Sighted

My loyal readers, both of you, will recall that before serving on the city council I chaired the Lakewood Landmarks and Heritage Advisory Board. As such, I gave a speech about historic preservation to anyone who would either have me to their meeting or who could not away from me fast enough.

One thing we covered in that speech was the economics of historic preservation. Yes, old buildings look nice. And yes, history is a great thing to know. Yeah, you can learn from what our predecessors said and did. But cities have to make hard choices about what to get involved with. For a city, historic preservation makes sense when it develops the economy. And my talk thus focused on how history and historic presevation building drive jobs, tourism, and so forth.

This becomes relevant as we roar past summer into the season when we set the Lakewood budget for 2010. Talk about a Fall that's coming. With the economy down hard, the council will have to decide what to fund. Members of our parks commmission are circulating an interesting newspaper story that illuminates something I'd not thought much about: that just like historic preservation, parks and recreation have a real economic impact.

The story is out of New York, so of course the numbers are crazed. But if you read through it, you see implications for any community. And thre's a link to a broader study that connects economic development and parks in several ways:

•Property value
•Tourism
•Direct use
•Health
•Community cohesion
•Clean water
•Clean air

It's worth reading and remembering this material as we enter the rough budget seas ahead.
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