The Technical Preservation Services (TPS) branch of the National Park Service (NPS), the division that manages the federal historic tax credit program, has recently expanded and improved their website. The cosmetic and content updates to the site make it well work a visit for those in the historic tax credit field.
The home page features a series of recent case studies on a loop and you can click on the studies to see additional information. Another nice feature is the “Latest Headlines†section that appears in the body of the homepage. This page provide a list of recent NPS speaking engagements and other news such as press releases, statistical updates, and regulation changes, which are also published in the Federal Register.
The site continues to provide access to full-text Preservation Briefs and other Preservation Tech Notes put out by TPS as well as information about Cultural Landscapes. This information is now complemented by a new section that specifically addresses the intersection of historic preservation and environmental sustainability. Here, users can access TPS’s recently released new sustainability guidelines as well as information about weatherization of historic buildings and examples of historic tax credit projects that have successfully combined historic preservation and sustainability.
The improvements to the TPS site are part of a comprehensive expansion and improvement of the NPS website, which also has some new bells and whistles worth mentioning. The new interactive mapping system on the “Find A Park†page, which allows a user to search by state for a variety of NPS-related information, includes a layer for historic preservation tax credit projects with specific information on completed tax credit projects throughout the country.
This feature is a useful tool for quantifying the economic impact of the federal historic credit, which is critical to promoting the credit in the current environment of tax credit reform.
Similar changes have been made to the National Register of Historic Places page, making it a much more interactive experience. NPS is currently working to plot National Register-listed properties on Google Earth, which is accessible under the “Database/Research†tab. The site also provides other useful information about the National Register process.
So, if you have not clicked over there, it's worth a look.
About the Blogger – Albert Rex is the Director of the Northeast Office of MacRostie Historic Advisors. Albert has been active in preservation and real estate in New England for the past 17 years. Read more about Albert here.
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