AUGUSTA — A plan to have most of the downtown Water Street area listed, as a district, on the National Register of Historic Places would not require renovation to buildings there to undergo any additional review or meet historic preservation standards, unless building owners want to tap into the historic preservation tax credits that being in the district would make them eligible for to help pay for the work.

Building owners in the district who wish to take advantage of state and federal historic preservation tax credits to rehabilitate buildings there would have to follow historic preservation standards to be eligible for that funding help.

If building owners don’t want or need tax credit funding to help pay for their project, they can do what they want with their buildings, as long as the work meets building codes. That includes, if they wish, tearing a historic building down.

The National Register of Historic Places process, said Scott Hanson, an architectural historian with Sutherland Conservation & Consulting, is overseen by the National Park Service.

“However, that oversight is minimal,” Hanson said at a presentation about the proposed listing Wednesday, which was attended by about a half-dozen people, most of them city officials or committee members. “There is not a review of renovations. There are no limitations on what a property owner can and can’t do with a property. If an owner wants to tear down a contributing building, they’re welcome to do that.”

Officials working on the proposal to have almost the entire downtown Water Street area added to the National Register of Historic Places hope that’s not the result. Instead of buildings being torn down, they hope the state and federal tax credits for which buildings in the district could become eligible will prompt building owners to rehabilitate their buildings for new uses, including as housing and retail space.

Owners who use those tax credits, which could pay for up to 45 percent of their renovation costs, would be required to follow historic preservation standards, which generally require them to preserve a building’s most significant architectural features, and limit visible exterior changes.

“The review process and standards are intended to ensure the key character-defining features of the building remain intact,” Hanson said of the review of projects’ eligibility for historic preservation tax credits. He said the use of buildings can be changed, such as from commercial to residential, and significant interior changes can be made too, as long as they follow historic preservation standards.

The proposed district, according to a map of its boundaries, would include most but not all buildings on both sides of Water Street in the downtown area, from the building containing Shenanigans on the southern end to just before Laurel Street on the northern end. The district boundaries exclude Key Plaza, built in 1988 and thus not eligible, but encompass most of the rest of the downtown.

The draft map of the district was created by the city in 2000 as part of a previous stalled effort to have the area named to the historic register. Matt Nazar, the city’s development director, said the boundaries were drawn with National Trust for Historic Preservation standards in mind and were meant to include as many historic properties as possible.

Buildings in the district that are judged not to be “contributing” properties under historic standards would not be eligible for historic preservation tax credits.

Hanson said an estimated time period of significance must be determined as part of the application process. He said in downtown Augusta’s case, that time period will be from around 1850 — the date of construction of the oldest building in the district — up to 1966.

That time period saw Augusta establish itself as a major publishing headquarters, as the birthplace, Hanson said, of monthly magazines in America. He said the monthly publications were the reason Augusta got such a massive granite post office, now the Olde Federal Building, to handle the shipping requirements.

A massive fire took out most of the downtown buildings south of Bridge Street in 1865. A group of buildings north of Bridge Street built before the fire still stand within the proposed district.

Nazar said about a dozen downtown buildings already are listed on the registry, some individually, and some as a small group of buildings.

The effort to name the district to the National Register of Historic Places is similar, but not directly related, to another proposal underway to create a local historic district encompassing the riverfront downtown.

The local historic district, unlike the national historic registry listing, would regulate the changes building owners could make to the exteriors of their buildings that are visible to the public, and could require building owners to seek approval from a new city review board for such work.

The process of creating a local historic district is on hold after some building owners, mostly from a west side residential area, expressed concerns that it could delay, and add cost to, renovation projects.

City councilors voted last month to create a historic district ordinance, but the ordinance does not define where the district will be. That, according to Mayor David Rollins, will be one of the first duties of the new Augusta Historic District Review Board, a committee of citizens created by the ordinance.

Rollins said Wednesday the members of that board have not yet been selected.

The nearly simultaneous process of seeking to have the downtown declared a district on the National Register of Historic Places continues. Unlike the local historic district proposal, it does not appear to face much opposition. No one spoke against it Wednesday.

If a majority of building owners within the district objected, the proposal probably would not move forward. But Nazar said he has not heard of any building owners who object to it.

Hanson, of Sutherland Conservation & Consulting, which has its offices in the Olde Federal Building at 295 Water St., one of the buildings already named to the National Register of Historic Places in downtown Augusta, said the application to be listed on the register will go first to the Maine Historic Preservation Commission for review by its staff, then to the commission itself for approval. Then it will be forwarded to the National Park Service for review. He estimated the district, if the application is successful, could be added to the register around January next year.

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @kedwardskj