Maine Real Estate & Development Association (MEREDA) Hosts Breakfast Seminar, titled “The Maine Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit: A Re-Invigorated Tool” on June 24, 2008.
Sponsored by: Norway Savings Bank & Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon
In 2006, The Brookings Report, “Charting Maine’s Future”, recommended that “Maine should…enhance the state’s underutilized state historic preservation tax credit to make it a better tool for encouraging reinvestment and rehab in traditional towns and downtowns.”
The Maine Legislature responded this year by significantly expanding the credit to provide a Maine state credit equal to 25 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures. Projects that involve a substantial affordable housing component receive a credit at a 30 percent rate. The Federal credit adds an additional 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures. The combined credits provide a powerful financial resource for the preservation of Maine’s historic buildings and for downtown redevelopment.
Our panel (Amy Cole Ives, founder of Sutherland Conservation & Consulting in Hallowell, and John Kaminski and Gary Vogel, both attorneys at Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon in Portland) will discuss the legislative process to enact the expanded credit, the requirements and potential uses of the credit as a tool for historic preservation and development, the linkage of the increased credit to affordable housing and the impact that the credit is expected to have on historic preservation in Maine.
