12.16.2009 -  Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program


Remarks by Terry Dickinson, Assistant to the CEO, regarding Article 20 of House Bill H 7204 (Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program) to House Finance Committee of Rhode Island General Assembly on Tuesday, February 5, 2008




The 15 historic preservation projects that have been completed in Newport with the help of the tax credit program, and the ten additional projects that are either pending or in-progress, are helping to preserve Newport’s architectural heritage. The task of historic preservation is massive for Newport, our state and the country as a whole. It requires a collaboration of Federal, State, municipal and non-profit agencies and organizations working together to carry it out. We understand very clearly the costs involved in this work. In 1999, McGinley-Hart, an architectural engineering firm from Boston, determined the preservation needs of the Preservation Society alone in taking care of its ten historic properties to be approximately one hundred million dollars over the next thirty years.

If Newport should neglect to preserve its structures it will eventually lose it character, and the sense of uniqueness that dates back to colonial times. Once the City loses that appeal it will no longer be an attractive destination for visitors. The region is already suffering a decline in museum attendance over the past several years. If that trend were to be exacerbated by the effects of a deterioration of our architectural heritage we would lose critical revenues necessary to preserving the properties under our stewardship. The twenty-five projects undertaken with help from the historic tax credit program total $51 million in preservation work, and are helping to slow or halt the effects of that deterioration.

We lose part of our heritage on the local and broader national level not by catastrophe, but by the act of erosion. It happens slowly by losing one house, one street and one neighborhood at a time to neglect and eventual destruction. And once we lose that part of our heritage we can never get it back.

The Preservation Society was started in 1945 by a small group of people whose mission it was to save Newport. 63 years later we are still trying to save Newport. For that reason the Preservation Society believes the Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program to be a critical component in our collective efforts to preserve our architectural heritage, and as such we recommend that it be retained, albeit with some modifications.


See the list of completed projects

See the list of active projects