Preservation New Jersey Assistance Available

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The New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law requires that any municipality that seeks to regulate historic sites, must adopt an historic preservation plan element into their municipal master plan. This plan element must be in place before adopting a local historic preservation ordinance to regulate historic properties, so it is the first step toward protecting historic sites at the local level.

The historic preservation plan element is optional, but more than 200 municipalities have them in their local master plans according to the NJ Historic Preservation Office. The Municipal Land Use Law is clear about the contents of an historic preservation element of a municipal master plan, and there are several exemplary examples from communities around the state. As part of my research I have collected close to 30 examples from communities that span a wide spectrum of preservation activity; from those that have no local preservation ordinance, to those that have advisory, regulatory or certified local government preservation ordinances.

So far I have worked with Metuchen, Fanwood, Mountain Lakes and Ridgewood, and will begin working in Hightstown next month. An article describing the work I will be doing with Highstown can be found here from an article in the May 26, 2008 Princeton Packet newspaper. http://packetonline.com/articles/2008/05/26/windsor_hights_herald/news/doc4836fb9bcd03%207807121124.txt

If you are interested in participating in this effort of Preservation New Jersey’s, contact me at donna@heritageconsultinginc.comor email Ron Emrich at ron@preservationnj.org. We can explain how this free of charge assistance works, and what information we will need from your community to get started.

They say you can’t go home again, but it has been a real joy to work in New Jersey again after all these years.