West Orange Awarded $24.5K Historic Preservation Grant

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, NJDEP, announced Tuesday the Chris Christie Administration is awarding $93,000 in historic preservation grants to West Orange along with three other municipalities in the state.

West Orange will receive a $24,500 'Certified Local Government Grant', a grant which offers help to provide technical historic assistance to municipalities, Commissioner Bob Martin announced said.

The township will receive the grant for an intensive-level architectural survey of 100 historic resources in the St. Cloud neighborhood and the Main Street corridor.

Martin added, the city’s last survey, done in 1992, is in major need of updating.  The first two neighborhoods chosen are those with the greatest concentration of historic resources.

New Jersey annually sets aside 10 percent of the state’s allocation of federal historic preservation funds for Certified Local Government grants, which are administered by the DEP’s Historic Preservation Office (HPO), said Martin. These grants are available for a wide variety of projects, including public education, design guidelines, surveys, adaptive reuse studies, preservation plans/ordinances and National Register nominations.

Additionally, grants are being awarded to:

• Cape May City 
• Maplewood
• Montclair 

Montclair will receive $23,500 for the creation of a graphically designed set of detailed and comprehensive historic preservation design guidelines. This will facilitate the preservation of Montclair’s historic buildings by assisting homeowners, architects, and contractors as they plan and implement projects.

Cape May City will receive $25,000 for the continuation of its ongoing local historic district survey. Since the local historic district was amended in 2008, 883 properties have been surveyed. A total of 457 properties out of 1,525 remain to be surveyed. At an estimated cost of $135 per survey, this grant will allow for the completion of an additional 185 surveys.

Maplewood will receive a Certified Local Government (CLG) Grant of $20,000 for the fourth phase of an intensive-architectural survey. The three previous phases were also funded by CLG grants. The fourth phase will address approximately 270 historic resources in the College Hill neighborhood, said Martin.