Adopted by the Board of Aldermen of the City of New Bern, North Carolina in December 2011, the New Bern Historic Preservation Plan is a policy document resulting from a year-long planning process.
Hanbury Preservation Consulting, with assistance from Thomason & Associates and Fulton Forde, engaged in research, conducted stakeholder interviews, held public meetings, facilitated visioning exercises and collected survey data to develop the plan. The consulting team worked closely with an appointed steering committee to vet the vision, goals and actions of the plan, and to solicit feedback on potentially controversial issues.
The resulting document reviews the city’s history, outlines its previous preservation efforts, identifies the local organizations that impact preservation, and details the regulatory framework and context for preservation planning at the federal, state, and local level. It also includes a thorough listing of financial incentives and programs applicable to preservation projects in New Bern.
At the core of the document are the vision and goals for preservation in New Bern. They are distilled into forty-six actions. The actions address topics ranging from archaeology, to code enforcement and heritage tourism, reflecting the broad spectrum of opportunities and concerns derived from the public and the steering committee. An implementation chart prioritizes the actions, indentifies potential partners, and estimates costs.
Hanbury Preservation Consulting worked closely with the City of New Bern to engage the public with a web presence for the project. Draft documents and presentations were posted on the site and an extensive email list for notifications about public meetings and comment periods was collected from it.