Community Heritage Partners

Year Established: 1985

Community Heritage Partners is a national award-winning full-service architectural, planning, preservation, and development firm with a focus on town planning, historic preservation, and urban development planning for public and private sector clients. We are known for collaborating with clients, municipalities, technical consultants, investors, lenders, and construction contractors to identify and work out affordable, buildable solutions in some very challenging circumstances. We are recognized for working constructively with diverse community organizations to achieve win-win solutions that can bring project proponents and community quality of life groups together with shared development solutions. Established over 30 years ago, Community Heritage Partners continues to innovate and regenerate places using architecture, planning, urban design, historic preservation, and real estate strategies to develop innovative design solutions and find new active uses for under-utilized properties and older buildings. Our design plans for new construction are informed by our knowledge of indigenous historic architectural and construction precedents. When these older structures can generate new revenues, provide reasonable returns on investments, grow the local tax base, and strengthen property values, we are enabling them to play a vital role in continuously improving local quality of life. An ever-improving and appreciating building stock is KEY to community success, because it adds safety, comfort, energy efficiency, livability, and economic sustainability, as well as more life and new investment. Without these, cities, towns, and villages are always at risk of backsliding. We also work at the larger scale of districts, neighborhoods, and communities, to recommend improvements in community and economic development policy and procedures that will encourage and support individual property improvements. Working closely and collaboratively with our clients, we produce plans and studies to analyze project development feasibility, as well as fund-raising visualization graphics, and full architectural plans for project pricing, budget development, bidding/negotiations, and construction. We emphasize design innovation, interpretative historic preservation, and downtown revitalization in all our work, and provide the full complement of design and technical professional services necessary to produce value-added, timely, and financially feasible architectural results. We work throughout the Eastern United States, with a focus on the Mid-Atlantic.

Types of Work

• Foodservice/Restaurant: 5%
• Historic Preservation/Restoration: 35%
• Housing (Multi-Unit): 5%
• Housing (Small Projects/Additions): 15%
• Museum/Galleries: 5%
• Office Buildings/Commercial: 10%
• Planning: 10%
• Religious Facilities: 5%
• Urban Design: 15%
• Special Services:Small Projects (under $50k)

Projects 

Lancaster Central Market Preservation and Development Guidelines; Urban Design and Development Plan for Portland Maine's Public Market; Addition and Renovations, Old City Hall, Bradford, PA; Design Guidelines, Market Square, Manheim, PA; Management Action Plan for Susquehanna Gateway (Lancaster-York) Heritage Region, PA; Historic Structures Report, Dvlpmt Feasibility Study, Reconstruction and Museum Planning for Stevens-Smith Historic Site, Lancaster, PA; Historic Structures Report and Preservation Plan for Oil Heritage Region, PA; Commercial Corner Renovations and Storefront Reconstruction; The Franklin Apartments, Ephrata, PA; Renovations and New Addition for Community Mennonite Church, Lancaster, PA; Development Feasibility Planning and Design for Cooper School, Shenandoah, PA; Residential Kitchen Renovations, Lancaster, PA; New Vacation Residence, Kennebunkport, ME; Residential Bath and Bedroom Renovations, Worcester, MA.

Awards 

2013 American Planning Association's National Planning Excellence Award for Urban Design - Lancaster Central Market - Preservation and Development Guidelines. PA Downtown Center's Annual Downtown Physical Improvements Awards. Historic York, Inc's Annual Preservation Award. Lancaster County Planning Commission's 2012 Smart Growth Leadership Award. PA Historical and Museum Commission's $25,000 Keystone Planning Grant, 2014, for "West King Street: Past and Future" urban development research and design project. Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County's 2014 Building Preservation Award - Walnut and Charlotte Streets Storefront Reconstruction.

Principals 

Eugene L. Aleci, RA, AIA, APA

Contacts

Consultant: Eugene L. Aleci, RA, AIA, APA