The City of Liberty Historic Preservation Office received a federal grant to create a Historic Preservation Plan for the City. The plan is now available for the pubic to read, review and provide comment. Comments can be submitted by email to Jeanine Thill at jthill@libertymo.gov (this is the preferred method) or you can also contact Jeanine by phone at 816-439-4537
The deadline to submit public comment is Feb. 24 at noon. You can find the full plan online here »
The full plan and the following synopsis was written by Heritage Strategies after extensive research and interviews with Liberty stakeholders.
Why Read Liberty’s New Historic Preservation Plan?
The City of Liberty has a mature historic preservation program that effectively began in the 1970s with the City Council’s determination to revitalize Liberty’s Historic Square. Thanks to the initiatives and investments of many community leaders, business owners, homeowners, nonprofit organizations, and City staff, Liberty as a community today enjoys robust benefits from historic preservation.
Liberty not only has many historic districts and individual properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places, but the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has awarded the community a coveted Preserve America designation. Historic Downtown Liberty, Inc., is one of the top Main Street organizations in the state – and nationally accredited by the National Main Street Center – and the commercial heart of Liberty’s Historic Downtown is considered a regional destination. So much so, that recently the City completed a next-generation renewal of the Square’s streetscaping and utilities. Historic neighborhoods are well-regarded places to raise families and live happily in the Kansas City metro area – some are locally designated to encourage greater investment, and still more neighborhoods are worthy of study and potential local protection.
Moreover, multiple museums and historic sites preserve and explain Liberty’s unique history, with sustained enthusiasm. Of note, local appreciation for the community’s African American heritage is considerable, dating from an important community survey undertaken in the mid-1990s, a time when many communities had not yet deeply considered the multiple strands of their collective history. Community history groups also can participate in one of the nation’s rare National Heritage Areas, Freedom’s Frontier, one of only 55 recognized nationwide. Designated by Congress and supported by the National Park Service, this program tells the story of the Kansas-Missouri border strife leading up to the Civil War and much more.
So why undertake Liberty’s first historic preservation plan? The answer is, each generation needs its own way of thinking about community values. This plan celebrates the accomplishments of the past 40 years. More important, it provides a path for the leaders of today and tomorrow to claim great achievements of their own in the next 40 years.
Historic preservation is not simply about maintaining historic buildings, or even whole districts. To do preservation properly, those planning almost any community action must ask, “How can this undertaking reinforce Liberty’s character and the assets of our community that support our quality of life?” How will the City maintain the public domain and build trails to connect all neighborhoods – and lead pedestrian customers to the events and businesses around the Downtown business district? How does the City spend federal and state grants or confer local property tax benefits or encourage use of federal and state income tax credits in the name of preservation? How do we tell our visitors about what we have to offer, and help them find their way around?
- If you’d like a more detailed picture than this short explanation, but you don’t want to read the entire plan, try Chapter 1.
- If you love history, this plan provides a relatively short explanation of how Liberty came to be the special place visitors and residents now enjoy – you can see and experience the physical evidence of that history all over the city once you’ve read Chapter 2.
- If you’re curious about the City’s historic preservation program and how it works, read Chapters 3 and 4.
- If you’d like to learn more about how the City’s planners and other administrators can support historic resources in the work they do, read Chapter 5.
- If you’re curious about all those history organizations, or wayfinding, or how tourism promotion and development works in Liberty, try Chapter 6. That chapter, in fact, lays down one of the greatest long-term challenges for Liberty’s next four decades – teaching your children how Liberty works and how to be its next leaders, for the sake of preservation and otherwise.
If you’re thinking you’d like to see some changes, there’s an appendix that summarizes a community survey given to support the plan mid-way through 2020, that nearly 500 people took.
And that last point should tell you what you really need to know – that so many people in this relatively small town went to the trouble to answer the call for their thoughts. We hope this plan shows those respondents, and many others, how to admire and care for Liberty and work together for even greater achievements in the years to come.