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Architectural Review Board updates guidelines, seeks education, grants and penalties to protect Roanoke historic districts
Summary
City planner Catherine Gray reported revisions to the H‑1/H‑2 design guidelines, said staff handled most minor approvals, and described next steps including education, an awards program, a pilot grant in Gainsborough and consideration of penalties and compliance checks to deter unapproved work in local historic districts.
The Architectural Review Board reported this morning that it revised design guidelines to clarify replacement standards for windows and roofing and to create clearer rules for placement of alternative energy systems in Roanoke’s local historic districts.
“Preserving culturally, historically, and architecturally significant buildings through preservation and context sensitive design is one of the policies that is within City Plan 2040,” said Catherine Gray, principal planner and acting agent to the ARB. Gray presented the board’s annual work, statistics for 2024, and proposed next steps.
The update matters because the ARB’s rules govern changes to properties in the city’s local historic overlay districts (H‑1 and H‑2). Gray told council and the ARB that staff and the board used City Plan 2040 and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation as the basis for the revisions, and focused revisions on windows, doors, roofing and rules for alternative energy.
Gray said staff reviewed 88 applications administratively in 2024 (30 of those were…
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