The Eastmoreland neighborhood in Southeast Portland has lost another round in its bid to get on the National Register of Historic Places.

The National Park Service on Monday returned the nomination to the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department -- the third time Eastmoreland has tried to get on the list.

The state agency said the National Park Service, which maintains the National Register, found at least two unresolved issues when reviewing the latest nomination, including no accurate count of Eastmoreland homeowners who objected to the nomination.

The count has been a sticking point in the past.

Ian Johnson, the state parks department’s associate deputy historic preservation officer, said several property owners had concerns about the way the parks department calculated the number of property owners. The state parks department facilitates applications to the National Register of Historic Places.

“We were asked to figure out how many owners, and how many valid objections,” Johnson said. He said the department returned the application twice before, in part due to issues with counting trusts and estates.

In previous attempts for the designation, a handful of property owners divided their property ownership into multiple trusts, legally creating thousands of new owners for four properties — all of which objected to the designation. Johnson said the parks department did not count those trusts in the latest application to the national parks service, and concluded that only 48 percent of property owners submitted valid objections. If more than 50 percent of owners in the neighborhood object to the nomination, the district won’t be listed.

But the National Park Service still questioned the state’s methodology, and sent it back for review.

The state parks department said it may resubmit the nomination, after revising state rules for the National Register program to address the Eastmoreland case. Johnson said the changes would likely clear up gray areas not specified under federal guidelines — such as how to count trusts or estates.

Johnson said it’s unusual for the department to see so much discussion over a historic places designation — usually neighborhoods either support or oppose the nomination overwhelmingly. When Portland’s Laurelhurst neighborhood was nominated for a historic place designation, Johnson said, less than 1 percent of homeowners objected.

The Eastmoreland neighborhood was first considered for nomination as a historic place in February 2017, but the nomination was returned and resubmitted twice. The neighborhood association launched the nomination as a way to spare the neighborhood from home demolitions during Portland’s construction boom, but became mired in controversy. Detractors worried that the distinction would impose new limits for residents trying to repair or renovate their homes.

The latest nomination pointed to Eastmoreland’s colonial, Tudor and English cottage revival homes, along with American-style bungalows and craftsman designs. It claims historical significance from 1910 to 1961, a span that covers 1,030 of its 1,277 buildings.

Though the city has used the National Register of Historic Places for the last 25 years as the main decider of what gets saved from demolition or major remodels, many criticized the approach, including preservationists who said the process of adding properties to the historic register was too slow and expensive to be effective at saving important buildings.

Earlier this year, Portland drafted new rules that would limit the amount of control the National Register of Historic Places has on what residents of historic neighborhoods could do, and would allow homeowners to divide single-family homes into apartments.

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

Elliot Njus contributed to this story.

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