National Historic Register is not for everyone
NORTH BEND, Ore. -- To be in the National Historic Register a building has to be at least 50 years old and look like it used to.
According to Oregon Heritage, North Bend City Hall, Little Theater on the Bay, and four other buildings qualify.
North Bend City Planner David Voss says, "It's an honorific kind of thing…Just saying this building is significant in some way and we are honoring it by putting it on the National Register.”
The buildings are protected at the federal level and qualify for grants and a tax credit.
But there's a catch, and it's the reason Wayne Schrunk, who owns property on Sherman Ave., decided not to add his buildings to the Register.
If the owner decides to take advantage of the tax credit, the remodeling must be done with all original materials, which can be costly.
Schrunk says he was able to remodel five buildings for the cost of one.
“My goal in this was to try to get them to look like they did when they were built, but yet at a low cost so we could do more of them so we could clean up the whole downtown North Bend area,” said Schrunk.
He adds that paperwork and the strict time frame were also factors.
Make a note of this, considering Wayne Schrunk does local construction. This is the kind of quality you can expect; if he won't even invest the extra dime IN HIS OWN BUILDINGS, what do you expect him to do to yours?Â
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This is pretty-much how he views his employees, too, whether or not they're paid legally or paid under-the-table. But he's no different than the majority of business owners in the Bay Area.