Historical Review

During the January 6th City Council meeting, the City Council approved a contract with Jennifer Price with Price Preservation Research to conduct an historical survey for the downtown area.  This survey will include all the buildings on the 500 & 600 blocks of Lake Avenue along with the north side of the 100 blocks of east and west Railroad Street.

The purpose of this survey is to determine whether Storm Lake's Downtown is historic.  This could be through a district or just individual buildings within the downtown.  Most of the buildings within the downtown are more than 100 years old, but the age of the building doesn't necessarily make a building historic.  The Iowa State Historic Preservation Office and the National Historic Preservation Office base their findings on four different historical criteria:
1. Is the building associated with events that hold a significant contribution to history?
2. Is the building associated with lives of significant people?
3. Does the building embody characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction?
4. Does the building yield important information in history or prehistory?

Jennifer Price will start the historical survey in mid-January to conduct research on the downtown buildings.  Once Jennifer has completed her research, she can start preparing the Site Inventory Forms that will need to be submitted to the Iowa State Historic Preservation Office.  The reviewing by the State Historic Preservation Office is a requirement for the Downtown Facade Grant.

If any building owner within the Area of Potential Effect would still like to participate in the grant please contact Emily Haselhoff at 712-732-8002 or e-mail Haselhoff@stormlake.org!