The State Historic Preservation Board has recommended most of Lincoln’s Country Club Neighborhood be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The nomination of a 450-acre area encompassing about 1,250 houses has been forwarded to the U.S. Department of Interior for approval — and an answer should come by year’s end.

City planner and historian Ed Zimmer has been collecting data and working on the historic designation for more than a decade.

“It’s a huge nomination,” Zimmer said. “It’s certainly our biggest National Register district in Lincoln and at least one of the larger ones in Nebraska.”

Would such a historic designation make it difficult for the city to widen 27th Street through the Country Club? The president of the Country Club Neighborhood Association, Bob Beecham, hopes so.

“That’s one of the reasons that we wanted to do it,” he said.

One of the major goals of his neighborhood association is to “do everything we can” to keep 27th Street from being widened through the neighborhood —“ripping up the neighborhood and destroying the neighborhood.”

“Widening 27th Street would alter it permanently,” Beecham said.

But Zimmer said historic designation would create more obstacles to widening 27th Street only if federal money or approval is involved in the street project. Then the impact on historic resources would have to be taken into account.

However, federal rules are the same whether properties are eligible for (because they’re more than 50 years old and historically significant in some way) or listed on the national register; and almost all of the homes in the designated area were built before 1958.

“What we’ve done is made it more clear that they are historic,” Zimmer said.

A recent example of the kind of obstacles involved in digging near historic homes is the city’s forced relocation of three historic but dilapidated houses, nicknamed the Triplets, for the Antelope Valley Project, which receives federal funding. The homes were eligible for the historic designation.

Even though they were falling apart and had been inhabited by homeless people, the city had to shell out $630,000 to preserve and move them rather than just demolish them — which seemed like a more practical solution.

So if the city ever decided to widen 27th Street and federal money were involved, “it would be as simple and painless as the Triplets,” Zimmer said, in jest.

The boundaries of the so-called “Boulevards Historic District” are, roughly, South Street to the north, Rock Island Trail to the east (except the Rathbone Village commercial area), Calvert Street to the south and 22nd Street on the west.

While many people believe they have to jump through added hoops to make renovations to homes in historic districts, Zimmer said, that’s a myth. In fact, homeowners in historic districts can get tax incentives designed to encourage the rehabilitation of historic property.

A state incentive program allows an eight-year property tax freeze on homes in an historic district that are substantially improved — which is defined as renovations equal to 25 percent of the home’s valuation.

Historic designation usually increases property values, because Country Clubbers could advertise their homes as appearing on the register of National Historic Places.

Beecham expects property values would go up if the designation is approved. His own home is in the Country Club Neighborhood but outside the boundaries of the proposed historic district, but he has owned four homes in the proposed district, which he said has been home to many prominent architects and builders.

“This is a unique historic district,” he said.

Time will tell whether the feds agree.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.