Toccoa Gets Grant for Historic Resources Survey

The city of Toccoa will receive some grant funding to help with an upcoming historic preservation project.

This week, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Historic Preservation Division announced that Toccoa would receive $6,000 in grant funding to help pay for a city-wide historic resources survey.

Weslie Clark with Main Street Toccoa said that the grant will help pay for the first phase of what will be a two-phase project.

“We need to update the city-wide survey of all of the historic resources that the city has and Phase One will be just the historic downtown and then over the next five years, we will complete the entire city,” said Clark.

She went on to say that the city will be looking mainly at getting a record of the historic buildings that Toccoa has.

“It is an inventory of all of the buildings in the downtown and in particular, the historic ones, that is those built before 1950,” said Clark.

Clark said that the city will begin the first phase of the historic resources survey this summer and work to complete it by June 2016.

She added that the city appreciates the grant from the Georgia DNR.

Toccoa was one of nine communities to receive grant funding through this award process as the state awarded a total of $88,170 in grants that are actually being funded through federal dollars from the National Park Service.

The city’s grant is a 60-40 grant, meaning that Toccoa will spend $4,000 to receive the $6,000 in grant funding.

Georgia Historic Preservation Division Director David Crass said that because historic resource surveys are the foundation of all preservation activity, the agency made the decision this year to offer priority funding for survey and National Register grant projects.

Crass added that these surveys will also identify buildings that could be eligible for their state and federal tax incentive programs.