With growth coming to Habersham County, it’s more important now than ever for cities to put measures in place to preserve the charm and history that citizens love in Habersham’s small towns. And with so much of that growth happening in Cornelia, the Historic Preservation Commission is working to do just that.
After years of work, Cornelia’s Historic Preservation Commission met for the first time with a full board of commissioners Thursday afternoon. With the city’s facade remodel moratorium in place, the commission is sinking their teeth into design standards, Cornelia’s history, training and gearing up for new businesses coming to Cornelia’s downtown.
The city began putting together a preservation commission in 2016, which started with three years of research into every property in the city, followed by presentations to the State Historic Preservation Office and, finally, the work to actually put the commission together.
Cornelia’s Main Street is making huge progress, earning the Georgia Downtown Association’s highest honor at their annual conference for the development of the Downtown Cornelia area. It’s not just the GDA that’s noticing Cornelia, at least six new businesses are coming to the city in the next few months.
“Downtowns are going through such a renaissance right now because of the charm and the character of these old historic buildings,” Cornelia Community Development Director Jessie Owensby says. “It’s our history, and these buildings are a hundred years old. They have lasted through natural disasters, and plagues and all the things, and we want to keep [them] and keep that character. This historic preservation commission will help to do that.”
The Cornelia Historic Preservation Commission is made up of five Habersham citizens that own property in Cornelia and have experience with historic preservation. The commissioners include academics, property and business owners with historic restoration experience and citizens with a deep love for history and preservation.
Even with their different levels of experience and knowledge, their hopes for the city are the same– to protect and preserve Cornelia’s history.
The preservation commission is currently working on design standards for the downtown area to keep new businesses coming to Cornelia in line with the historic charm of the city. While chain restaurants and shops are welcome near 441, they don’t belong on Main Street.
“It’s actually very good timing that we have the historic preservation commission now,” Owensby says. “[…] We’ve got several new businesses coming in, and we’ve got several who are waiting for an available space. It’s great that we have this historic preservation commission now because what we don’t want is for someone to come in and tear down this hundred-year-old building and build this modern-day shopping center in the middle of our downtown.”
While the preservation commission is working to keep Cornelia’s history safe, they aren’t looking to make Cornelia “the way it was,” like some Habersham citizens want. Owensby tells Now Habersham that growth and change are inevitable, and that they’re good things. She says if a city isn’t growing, it’s dying.
“It [Cornelia] will never be the same as it was in 1945; It will never be the same as it was in 1965. And that’s a good thing,” Owensby says. “If you are not growing and changing and evolving with the current times and the current generation, then you are not going to be successful. Is there a way to grow and to evolve, and to take on new technologies and new ways to do things, and still uphold our small-town charm? Yes, and that is what we are doing.”
