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A Note from the Board President:
We are fresh from a successful Fall Benefit, but there is still a lot of work to be done at MHPN before the end of the year. Work continues to identify and hire our next Executive Director, and next steps are happening to finalize the implementation of the long-awaited return of the historic preservation tax credit. For those of you who may have missed the announcement, there will be a Public Hearing on the draft rules for the new State Historic Preservation Tax Credit on December 10, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. in the Lake Michigan Room in the Michigan Economic Development Corporation Building, 300 N. Washington Square, Lansing, Michigan 48913. Public comments on the current draft rules will be accepted in person during the hearing or may be made in writing via email or hard-copy prior to the hearing. Emailed copies of comments must be sent to preservation@michigan.gov. If emailing your comments, please include “Draft Rules Comments” in the subject line to assure they are included. Hard copy comments should be mailed to
Robbert McKay
State Historic Preservation Office
300 North Washington Square
Lansing, MI 48913
Public comments may be submitted until 5:00 p.m. EST, Friday, December 10, 2021. The currently proposed rules can be found here.
As you will also see in this newsletter, MHPN was awarded a matching grant by the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) in support of our monthly workshop sessions. To meet the match requirement for the grant, MHPN is dedicating the funds raised as part of our year end appeal to this effort. Please watch for our board members appeals over the coming weeks, and be sure to support this worthy cause.
With you in preservation,
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MHPN 2022 Annual Statewide
Preservation Conference
Online Registration Opens Marchi 2022!
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The 42nd Annual Statewide Preservation Conference will take place in-person on Wednesday-Saturday, May 11-14, 2022, in Holly, Michigan, with the theme “Our Town: Preserving Places Together.” Venue One Eleven, our conference headquarters, is a lovely, adaptively reused property that includes a one-story school built in 1912 to accommodate Holly’s grade school through high school students, and the two-story, 1926-1928 building added when it became Holly High School.
The call for abstracts resulted in a large number of abstracts to select from for the 20 in-seat sessions. In addition to the in-seat sessions, the conference will include three tours: a Thursday afternoon tour of the small towns along the historic Saginaw Turnpike, a Friday morning walking tour of Downtown Holly, and a Saturday Great Michigan Roadtrip, using a self-guided format fashioned after the AAA TripTiks first popularized in the 1950s.
The MHPN will adhere to CDC Covid precautions in effect at the time of the conference. Watch for your copy of the brochure in the mail by early March 2022. For the latest news on the conference, please visit us online.
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MHPN Honored by the Michigan Downtown Association for Historic Tax Credit Advocacy
by Melissa Milton-Pung, MHPN Executive Committee Member
The Michigan Historic Preservation Network was honored this year with an award by the Michigan Downtown Association in appreciation for our support of the Michigan Historic Tax Credit. Melissa Milton-Pung, MHPN Past President and current Executive Board Member attended the MDA Conference in Detroit on November 4 to accept this great honor on behalf of the MHPN.
Good policy, in most instances, takes a long time to craft. Done well, it puts into place the tools necessary to make wonderful things happen. This is the case with the Michigan Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit, known as the HTC. During the gut punch of the Great Recession, the Michigan HTC enabled dozens of projects to be completed. The impact was statewide; preservationists across the state can quickly list at least a project or two in or near their community that happened because of this program.
Then, in 2011, we lost that credit and saw a massive void in project financing. Sure, some projects plowed forward, but the majority of that momentum on historic rehab paused. Until now.
Thanks to Senate Bill 54 of 2020, we’re back, baby! It was a decade-long campaign to recreate the Michigan HTCs.
In bringing these critical financing incentives back to life, the preservation community remains grateful for the outspoken support of numerous elected officials (past and present), our lobbiest, Melissa McKinley of Kelley Cawthorne, all who showed up at the Capitol or sent messages to their legislators in support of the credit. The world is run by those who show up – and we’ve proven that point by persistently advocating for the return of this vital tool for community reinvestment and historic preservation.
What’s next? We’re almost through the rule-making process at the State, and plan to enjoy seeing this program get rolling again. Our next legislative goal will be to blow the cap off our limited pool of tax credits to see room for even more projects make future history.
If you want to learn more about the MHPN's years long effort to establish a historic tax credit in Michigan, please check out this blog by our own Melissa Milton-Pung.
Photo: Cristina Sheppard-Decius, MDA Chair (left) and Melissa Milton-Pung (right)
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Edsel and Eleanor Ford House Visitor Center
Photo by Ford House
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| 40 Years in Focus: MHPN's Annual Fall BenefitThe 27th Annual MHPN Fall Benefit was held at the beautiful new Visitor Center for the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores on Sunday, October 3, from 5:00-8:30 p.m. It brought together 123 guests for MHPN's first in-person event in over a year.
Before the start of the Fall Benefit, our host invited guests to tour Ford House or the Gardens. Edsel had an eye for automobile design but, along with Eleanor, for architecture and landscape architecture as well. The actual benefit was held on the second floor of the SmithGroup designed Visitor Center and Administration building, the most significant addition to the estate in more than 90 years, and the largest new construction since the house was built. The space boasts full glass walls overlooking Ford Cove and Lake St. Clair beyond.
In addition to the live and silent auctions (with some amazing packages highlighting Michigan’s historic places), the event provided a wonderful opportunity to recognize two of Michigan’s long-time preservationists with Lifetime Achievement Awards. Pamela Hall O’Connor, MHPN past president and Kalamazoo based preservationist began her advocation efforts in the 1980s, eventually turning her work into a career. A 30 year MHPN member, she chaired the Public Policy Committee, led a group tasked with research and writing MHPN’s second preservation economic benefits report in 2006, and, having been elected to the Board in 2001, served on the Executive Committee between 2003 and 2010 with two terms as President. Even though she officially retired in 2019, Pam can always be called upon to advocate for historic preservation - and has done so many, many times.
The second award winner of the evening was Sharon Ferraro. Also based in Kalamazoo, Sharon has served as the Historic Preservation Coordinator there since 2001, during which time she has increased the number of locally protected historic districts, developed a resident pool of craftspeople, rescued buildings, and more… But it is not just in her local community that Sharon has had an impact, she co-founded the Old House Network in 2003, an organization that has presented 10 Old House Expos and dozens of hands-on workshops for Southwest Michigan homeowners and she initiated programs to train scores of people statewide to restore wooden windows. Sharon is a popular trainer for MHPN and the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions. In Kalamazoo and elsewhere, Sharon has raised preservation from an interesting possibility to a necessary consideration for all our communities.
Congratulations to our latest Lifetime Achievement winners, Pamela Hall O’Connor and Sharon Ferraro. You make Michigan a better place to be a preservationist.
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|  | Pamela Hall O'Connor
photo by Terry O'Connor
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Sharon Ferraro
photo by William Dyer
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MHPN End of Year Campaign
Again this year MHPN has received a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) to support our beloved online workshop series. The MHPN has to match the MCACA grant, so funds raised using our "Show Double Your Love" campaign will support this effort. Watch for appeals from our board members on social medial and don't forget to Make Your Gift Want to beat the rush- donate today!
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Preservation Calendar
May 11-14, 2022: 2022 MHPN Annual Statewide Preservation Conference, "Our Town: Preserving Places Together." Holly, Michigan
November 7-12, 2022, The Association for Preservation Technology International (APTi) "Detroit Looking Back, Driving Forward" conference. Detroit, Michigan.
Michigan Historic Preservation Network
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