This is not to say that there is a negative involvement with the Corps of Engineers. We believe the corps has some role in this, but to move the program into the Department of the Army seems, to us, to be somewhat of a strain.

Our view of the council would be the domestic areas of the Government plus the corps and the EPA Administrator.

We would suggest that possibly this council be chaired by the Secretary of Commerce, and we would urge you to consider the provisions which were adopted in the National Environment Policy Act of 1970 which established the lead agency and delegated to all of the other executive branch agencies specific responsibility for portions of the act.

This view, we think, and this precedent would allow a strong program to be developed rapidly and would deal simultaneously with the development of infrastructure and provision of jobs.

As I stated, we believe that an application should be deemed approved unless a specific finding is made that there is an inallowable activity. We also would urge that the Congress, in order to give weight to this thing, consider that in the event this program does not move along or there appears to be activity on the part of the executive branch to stall it, that you resurrect again the antideferral and antiimpoundment legislation of 1947 which would require the executive branch either to move the money or to put up for deferral or rescission.

As I mentioned, we are concerned about and hope that you will recognize the opportunities for consolidation of existing programs into this mix which deal with similar subjects.

I would like to speak for a few minutes concerning the area of historic preservation which Mr. Ainsilie and I have a shared interest and concern for.

We wholeheartedly endorse title IV of S. 724, the Historic Site Development Jobs Act of 1983.

I think it is important for us to recognize that using executive branch figures, that approximately 80 percent of all of the buildings which exist at this time will exist at the turn of the century. The condition in which they exist will be critical to the well being of our communities.

Rehabilitation has been well documented by the AIA and the National Trust as being more efficient in terms of energy consumption and more efficient in terms of dollars and has a far lower impact on communities in terms of relocation and other activities such as that.

We would urge that you give recognition not only to historic buildings, but to historic places. Because the essence of neighborhood development and preservation and strengthening often, in a community, is allowing the citizens in a neighborhood to have a sense of place.

Often, the titles by which neighborhoods identify themselves can have a strong impact on the cohesion of a neighborhood.

I would think this came off the cuff of a buckeye in Cleveland, for instance. I have no knowledge about why a portion of Cleveland is called Buckeye, but there must be a history and a rationale which would give people some sense of place.

It seems to me when we deal with place, we also ought to deal with the provisions of the 1977 tax amendments, which allowed local governments to designate historic areas which were eligible for tax credit; at the same time, building around either a place or a historic building a coherent, cohesive neighborhood.

So we would urge that you develop that.

We believe that the inner-city venture fund is critical to the success of what you are attempting to accomplish in the historic preservations program.

We applaud the attention to historic structures. They have obviously been inadequately dealt with within the executive branch. We do suggest that they are magnets about which a broader strategy may be deleloped, and we both commend and urge that the inner-city venture fund be a strong and continuing part of this program.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that I am reasonable within my time span, so I will respond to questions verbally or in writing.

Senator STAFFORD. Thank you, very much, Mr. Meeker.

We, again, appreciate your being here. You have done well on time, which, again, we appreciate.

When I first saw your name, and before I read your title, I was trying to place you in Middlebury, Vt., of which there is a prominent family of lawyers in that town; I believe you could claim it if you wanted to, but it is a very nice family.

Mr. MEEKER. It is a very nice family. Only two names from that family came with that name, spelled one way getting on the boat, and spelled another way upon arriving.

Senator STAFFORD. The next witness would be Mr. Ainslie.
We would be very happy to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL L. AINSLIE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Mr. AINSLIE. Mr. Chairman and Senator Randolph, it is a pleasure to be here representing the National Trust, our 135,000 members across America, but more broadly, the 2 million or so Americans who are actively involved on a daily basis in historic preservation.

Who are those people?

Perhaps many people still think they are the gray haired and blue haired ladies of the past who fought to save some of our great monuments in our country, and thank God they are still working for preservation. But we have broadened preservation very significantly in recent years.

They are neighborhood leaders like Jose Ovalle, who will speak to you in a moment, from Chicago.

They are developers who, in the last year, just the last year, have invested $1.2 billion under the 1981 ERTA investment credit provisions.

They are laborers, now finding new skills and new employment in historic preservation. They are mayors, mayors all over this country who are seeing preservation as perhaps the only viable strategy for reviving our older cities.

Preservation has truly moved beyond history and very much into the center of real estate activity in our country, or as the president of the Atlantic Richfield Foundation stated to me recently, after finding out about our inner-city ventures fund which I will elaborate on in a moment, he said, "You all have really moved beyond the arts business and into broad based community development." I could only agree with him. This is why we are truly committed and truly commend your committee for the bold initiative of title IV of S. 724 which, in fact, I think, for the first time in public law, attempts to link employment and historic preservation, a linkage that we feel very strongly exists.

Let me say that we have been in the jobs creating business in a very real way.

Take, for a moment, our main street program, a national initiative at reviving small-town center cities that have been decaying. In the last 2 years alone, in the 29 small towns that we have been active in a demonstration program, we have seen the creation of 340 new businesses. New businesses that have come about because of comprehensive effort to revive those downtown using historic preservation as the backdrop.

We have also analyzed carefully the UDAG statistics of HUD and found that in the projects that were preservation projects versus the new construction projects under UDAG, 35 percent more jobs were created per dollar spent than in the new construction projects.

In fact, those statistics are biased because in many of the preservation projects, there are parking lots and other things that dilute the job intensity of preservation.

Let me turn for a moment to the two specific components of title IV and give you our comments on those.

As you know, there is a State block grant program of $500 million called for under title IV: $500 million that would go to State historic preservation officers to then be put out to restore and revive historic districts, historic sites, historic buildings in the States.

This is following on the lead of the Congress in the jobs bill phase 1 which provided $25 million for the State preservation officers. We think that this is a most important initiative and one that could be put to work very quickly. It will be addressed more fully in later testimony, so I will move on to the other key component of title IV.

Perhaps some are wondering what is the inner-city ventures fund, an initiative that is now over 2 years old, begun by the National Trust in 1981.

Well, the inner-city ventures fund is, very, very simply put, a venture capital fund for creating low and moderate income housing in historic districts throughout America. It is a fund to provide equity grants to neighborhood organizations, nonprofit organizations, to buy and rehabilitate real estate to become equitable owners in their own community. Too, if you will, to have a stake in the future change that is almost inevitable in our historic districts around the country.

This is a program that has already demonstrated a very successful track record. There are 19 neighborhood organizations already at work with some $22.5 million dollars of rehabilitation underway. Almost $20 million of that $22.5 million has been provided by the private sector through bank loans, through matching grants from local foundations and through some funds from local government. The demand for this program is enormous. In three rounds of applications, we have had $20 million of our money, which would be leveraged into $169 million of rehabilitation, in these inner-city neighborhoods. Another 275 neighborhood groups who have real estate options readily to go if money were available.

So we are quite confident that the $25 million would quickly translate itself into a minimum of $200 million of rehabilitation, and we estimate some 10,000 construction jobs in these communities.

In closing, let me just say that, again, we want to commend your committee for exhibiting, we feel, really extraordinary wisdom in defining the term 'infrastructure' broadly. By defining it to include our cultural and historic infrastructure in this country, we think you have plowed new ground and have begun to broaden, as we are attempting to do, the understanding and the use of historic preservation as a method for getting our country to work again.

It is a pleasure now for me to introduce, as part of my testimony, one of our recipients of inner-city venture funding, Mr. Jose Ovalle, the executive director of the 18th Street Neighborhood Development Corp. from Chicago.

He would like to speak for a minute and tell you about the way this fund is working in his community.

Thank you, very much.

STATEMENT OF JOSE OVALLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

EIGHTEENTH STREET DEVELOPMENT CORP.

Mr. OVALLE. Thank you, very much.

The 18th Street Development Corp. is located in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. This neighborhood is called Pilsen. We also have one of the highest unemployment rates in that particular neighborhood.

The 18th Street Development Corp. objectives are two-fold: No. 1, to train minority youth between the ages of 16 and 19 years old to be prepared to gain entrance into the contruction industry.

The other objective is to rehabilitate the so-much-needed living quarters for low-income families in the neighborhood.

As a result of the delivery system of the 18th Street Development Corp., we have gained agreements with three different labor unions to have our trainees accepted as apprentices within the construction industry.

These three different labor unions are the carpenters, one of the largest labor unions in the area, the plasterers, and the bricklayers, and we also have an association on the negotiation table, two other agreements that would be forthcoming in the near future, which are the sheetmetal workers and the painters.

As of December 1982, we have graduated over 85 trainees which are at the present time working as apprentices with the labor unions.

Of these 85, we have at least 15 graduated individuals who are already journeymen.

These same trainees do work with us on rehabilitating properties 4 days a week, and 1 day a week they go to the trade school, which means that they do get all the technical assistance necessary and all the technical experience before they come in as apprentices.

These able apprentices are rated at 6 trainees per 1 journeymen. These same groups have already rehabilitated 24 units which are occupied at the present time by low-income families in the neighborhood.

In 1981, Congresswoman Cardis Collins conducted a hearing in Chicago because of the Government cuts in CETA training programs. At that time, the 18th Street Development Corp. provedand there is a record—that these same trainees, after graduating from our training programs, became apprentices and in less than 3 years, they pay back to the Federal Government in tax revenues the money they spent in their own training.

To us, it is a very meaningful action due to the fact that many of these trainees were previously unemployed, with no duration in employment, unemployable, and some of them were members of families who were on public assistance.

As you well know, the recent budget cuts created one very big problem for our organization as well as many other organizations which meant that we were discontinued; all the materials for construction of these properties and for training were discontinued; all the equipment, tools, and some of the administrative costs that we had were discontinued.

We are very fortunate that the National Trust for Historical Preservation came to our aid and not just because of the great loan that they provided us but also because through their experience and through their help, we were able to open other gates and we were able to continue our programs; but above all, the technical assistance they provided to us, No. 1; and No. 2, the guidance they gave us into other sources of funds. We are still very much alive, and we are very hopeful that our training programs are going to continue.

Thank you, very much, Mr. Stafford.

Senator STAFFORD. Thank you, very much, Mr. Ovalle.

We appreciate your participation, and I have enjoyed looking at the slide show.

This brings us to my fellow Vermonter, Eric Gilbertson, who is the director for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. We would be very glad to hear you, and welcome to this committee in Washington.

Mr. GILBERTSON. Thank you, very much.

I have brought with me another Vermonter in exile, Peter King, who is the former grants manager for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and is now executive director of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers.

I have also brought with me a book that has some photographs and quotes about what historic preservation has done in Vermont