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MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 19 September 2001 SEP 21 200i Stephen Rohlf Building and Zoning Administrator City of Elk River 13065 Orono Parkway Elk River, MN 55330 Dear Steve, It was good to talk to you last week about the potential loss of the historic commercial buildings in downtown Elk River. I hope that my comments below will help you articulate to the city council and other interested parties justification for retaining these important cultural resources. I'm encouraged that the city is about to become a Certified Local Government (CLG) with a qualified Heritage Preservation Commission (HPC). This will allow Elk River to integrate historic preservation into local planning. Preservation planning is a process that organizes preservation activities (identification, evaluation, registration and treatment of historic properties) in a logical sequence. Decisions about the identification, evaluation, registration and treatment of historic properties are most reliably made when the relationship of individual properties to other similar properties is understood. Information about historic properties representing aspects of history and architecture must be collected and organized to define these relationships. This organizational framework is called a "historic context." The historic context organizes information based on a cultural theme and its geographical and chronological limits. Contexts describe the significant broad patterns of development in an area that may be represented by historic properties. Twenty of Minnesota's thirty Certified Local Governments have completed historic context studies. We strongly encourage cities to prepare context studies because they form the foundation for decisions about identification, evaluation, registration and treatment of historic properties. We spoke about the need to do an intensive level survey of the two -block area of downtown in order to properly assess the potential significance of these buildings. An intensive survey is most useful when it is necessary to know precisely what historic properties exist in a given area or when information sufficient for later evaluation and treatment decisions is needed on individual historic properties. 345 KELLOGG BOULEVARD WEST / SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA 55102-1906 / TELEPHONE: 651.-296-6126