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PrintCOLUMBIA — Columbia residents and visitors alike will soon be able to access information about historic buildings in Columbia.
In April 2010, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Office of State Historic Preservation awarded a $6,100 grant to the Columbia Historic Preservation Commission to develop an interactive historic map. All but $3,660 of the grant has already been appropriated, Tim Teddy, Columbia planning and development director, stated in a news release.
“[The] Historic Preservation Commission applied for a grant from the Department of Natural Resources State Historic Preservation to map all of our historic properties in the city of Columbia so that people who want more information on these properties can now go to an interactive website,” Brian Treece, member of the Historic Preservation Commission, said.
The map will include pictures with pop-ups containing a short description as to why the location is historically important. Treece said the map would be “particularly important in downtown Columbia.”
Once the map database is in place, the commission will set up a mobile phone application, which will allow folks to access information about buildings as they are walking by, said Treece.
The commission expects the interactive historic map to launch on the city website by September 2011.
Show Me the Errors 
Comments
Maybe working on this interactive map will keep the commission too busy to advocate for downtown bricked pavers to impede traffic, make "The District" wheelchair, bicycle and elderly unfriendly while creating an ice and snow removal nightmare as well as their other "pet project" to build an exact replica of an old burned down barn which had no amenities for the theatre troupe and was surrounded by mud in a park now isolated more than ever, thanks to the development of Grindstone Parkway.
I just hope they're not trying to make us believe that having such a map on the city website is going to do wonders for tourism in Columbia. We'll need a lot more than a map to make Columbia a tourist town.
(As if that's a good thing.)