NORTHAMPTON – During a Planning Board meeting on June 9, Barrett Planning Group, a community development organization from Hingham, gave an initial presentation on adding an “Historic Preservation Element” to Northampton’s Sustainable Comprehensive Plan.

The goal of the presentation was to lay out the scope of adding this element, as well as the timeline for which this element could be added.

Judi Barrett, the planning director, owner and operating manager of Barrett Planning, described this project as a “very typical planning approach” that involves an inventory assessment of what Northampton has at the moment and how protected these resources are in the city’s current iteration.

“We’re also looking in parallel at the history of preservation planning in [the Northampton] community and the extent to which that has or has not informed [Northampton’s] existing planning and land use policies,” said Barrett.

The second phase of this project involves the engagement piece, which will pick up pace in the fall when the city is livelier and people are back from the summer, said Barrett. This phase will allow the planning group to gather data about the city’s environment, as well as the cultural and natural landscapes. Ultimately, the final published Historic Preservation Element will fit right into the city’s broader sustainable plan.

“We are very much in phase one right now,” said Barrett, who added that a multitude of people are working on this project. “We are going to be doing a variety of public outreach [in the fall], some of which through conventional meetings, and others more on the street where people actually are so we can learn from the community about the things that are precious to the community and things they are concerned about.”

This phase of the project will eventually lead to policy recommendations and possible zone changes, so those details are still very much up in the air. From these steps, the planning group and the city will be able to develop a 10-year preservation action plan for Northampton’s historical inventory.

“We’re looking at what’s in Sustainable Northampton,” said Barrett, when discussing these initial steps. “What are we building on that already exists.

“We know that a historic preservation plan was actually done a few decades ago,” Barrett continued. “It may be old or outdated, but it’s part of the history of preservation. We’re trying to understand what’s of continued relevance today.”

The Planning Board will look to discuss some details of this project in a future meeting.

“I’m so glad the city is getting into [this project] because certainly one of the beauties of Northampton is our history and the way it’s been preserved,” said Planning Board member George Kohout.