Grand Rapids Fire Damage Rules: The Certificate and the Neglect

What the Act Covers

The Local Historic Districts Act, 1970 PA 169, sits at MCL 399.201 and following. It creates local historic district commissions and gives them authority over work within designated districts.

Section 399.205(1) is the operative requirement: a permit shall be obtained before any work affecting the exterior appearance of a resource is performed within a historic district or, if required under subsection (4), before work affecting the interior arrangements of a resource is performed within a historic district. The application is filed with the inspector of buildings.

What Counts as Work?

In PA 169 work is defined as construction, addition, alteration, repair, moving, excavation or demolition. Repair is on that list by name, which is what brings an ordinary fire restoration inside the Act. Alteration is separately defined as work that changes the detail of a resource but does not change its basic size or shape, so even like-for-like decisions about materials and profiles can be within scope.

Certificate, Denial, Notice to Proceed

Three outcomes, each defined in section 399.201a.

A certificate of appropriateness is the written approval of a permit application for work that is appropriate and that does not adversely affect a resource.

A denial is the written rejection of a permit application for work that is inappropriate and that adversely affects a resource.

A notice to proceed is the alternative route the Act provides where a certificate is not the appropriate outcome, and it is the mechanism by which work that would otherwise be refused can be permitted.

The Standards Applied

Under section 399.205(9) a commission adopts its own rules of procedure and adopts design review standards and guidelines for resource treatment.

Those standards run to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, as set out in 36 C.F.R. part 67. A commission may follow design review standards addressing the special design characteristics of its own districts where those are equivalent in guidance to the Secretary's standards.

Why Does That Matter After a Fire?

Because rehabilitation standards are built around retaining and repairing historic material rather than replacing it. On a fire-damaged building that pushes toward assessing what can be saved rather than stripping back to new, which affects both the scope and the cost of the work. It is also why a structural engineer's view on what the timber will still do is worth having early: it is evidence that supports the approach the standards prefer.

Any Elevation, Not Just the Front

A widely held misunderstanding, and it costs people time. Under PA 169 the commission reviews any work to the exterior of the building and does not distinguish as to the location of the work.

So a rear wall, a side elevation facing an alley, and a roof plane nobody can see from the street are all reviewable. Owners who assume the rules concern only what the public sees plan a scope that has to be revisited.

Minor Work Can Be Delegated

The provision worth asking about first. Under section 399.205(10) a commission may delegate the issuance of certificates of appropriateness for specified minor classes of work to its staff, to the inspector of buildings, or to another delegated authority.

The commission must give the delegated authority specific written standards for issuing those certificates, and must review them on at least a quarterly basis to decide whether the delegation should continue.

Whether stabilising or securing a fire-damaged building falls within a delegated class in your city is a question for the commission's staff, and it is the single most useful call an owner in a district can make in the first week. We publish no determinations on it, because it is a local administrative matter that varies.

Demolition, and What Is Inside That Word

Section 399.201a defines demolition as the razing or destruction, whether entirely or in part, of a resource, and it includes but is not limited to demolition by neglect.

Demolition by neglect is then defined as neglect in maintaining, repairing, or securing a resource that results in deterioration of an exterior feature of the resource or the loss of structural integrity of the resource.

Read That Against a Burned House.

Three verbs in the definition, and a fire-damaged building can fail all of them: maintaining, repairing, securing. Two consequences, and an open building in Michigan produces both: deterioration of an exterior feature, and loss of structural integrity. Nothing in the definition requires an owner to intend anything. It describes a state of affairs, and waiting for an insurer or a probate produces that state of affairs as reliably as indifference would.

What the Commission Can Do About It

Under section 399.205(11), upon a finding by a commission that a historic resource within a historic district, or a proposed historic district subject to its review and approval, is threatened with demolition by neglect, the commission may act.

What that looks like in practice depends on the local ordinance, and the relevant point for an owner is that a finding is available and that it is triggered by condition rather than by conduct.

A Denial Is Not a Delay

Where a commission denies an application, the applicant may not legally undertake any exterior work, including demolition, unless the decision is appealed and is ultimately modified or set aside by higher authority.

That is a full stop rather than a negotiating position, which is why the shape of an application matters and why speaking to staff before filing is worth more than speaking to them afterwards.

The Appeal Route

An applicant aggrieved by a commission's decision may appeal to the State Historic Preservation Review Board, an agency within the Michigan Strategic Fund, under section 399.205, and from there to circuit court.

Review Board proceedings run through an administrative law judge under the Administrative Procedures Act, MCL 24.201 and following, with the Board taking the final administrative decision. Michigan appellate cases have addressed the Board's role, including whether a commission may consider issuing a notice to proceed for work on a non-contributing resource within a district.

Is Appealing Realistic for an Ordinary Owner?

It is a genuine administrative process rather than a formality, and it takes time and usually a lawyer. For most fire owners the useful conclusion is not that appeal is impossible but that the first application is the one that matters, and that it is worth preparing properly rather than filing quickly and treating a refusal as a starting point.

What the Designation Is Worth

Worth stating because owners in this position sometimes conclude the district is simply a burden. Studies in Michigan and other states comparing property values in designated local historic districts with comparable undesignated areas have found values do not decrease and typically increase.

Heritage Hill is the local illustration. Whole blocks of the neighbourhood were once slated for demolition under urban renewal, and property values there rose 1200 per cent between 1974 and 2002.

Michigan Winters Do the Rest

Not a legal point and it belongs alongside them. Water entering a fire-damaged structure freezes, expands and thaws repeatedly across a Michigan winter, and charred timber that an engineer could have assessed and retained in autumn is frequently not retainable after two or three cycles of that.

So the securing question is doing two jobs at once here: it answers the neglect definition, and it preserves the building's repairability. Both point the same way and both point at acting before winter rather than after it.

Your Options, Compared

Ask about delegated minor work, then secure it. Addresses the neglect definition and protects the structure.

Apply properly for the repair. Prepared with staff input rather than filed fast.

Sell as it stands. Transfers the process, and a buyer who has been through a commission prices it differently from one who has not.

Wait through another winter. The route where the definition and the weather work on the building together.

Across Grand Rapids and Kent County

District coverage varies enormously. The largest is covered under Heritage Hill and Eastown, with the centre under downtown, Heartside and Belknap, the west under the West Side and Garfield Park and the north under Creston and the north east. Further pages deal with the suburban cities and townships and the wider West Michigan region.

Those outer areas include Wyoming, Kentwood, Walker, East Grand Rapids, Grandville, Cascade, Ada and Rockford, with Holland, Muskegon, Grand Haven and Kalamazoo beyond them.

The full index is on our service area index.

Rules Questions

How Do I Find out If I Am in a District?

The city holds the boundaries and will confirm for an address. It is a single call and it changes what applies to you.

Can I Do Emergency Work First?

Ask the commission's staff about delegated minor classes of work rather than assuming either way. That is the fastest route to a defensible answer.

What If the Commission Refuses?

You may not legally undertake the exterior work unless the decision is appealed and modified or set aside. Appeal lies to the Review Board and then to circuit court.

Primary Sources

Local Historic Districts Act, 1970 PA 169; MCL 399.201, 399.201a and 399.205
MCL 399.205(1), (9), (10) and (11) — permits, standards, delegation and neglect
Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, 36 C.F.R. part 67
Administrative Procedures Act, MCL 24.201 and following
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office guidance on appealing commission decisions