After more than a decade as executive director of Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), Eric Holcomb is retiring.
The city of Baltimore has set Dec. 31 as the deadline for individuals to apply for his position.
Holcomb, 58, has worked for Baltimore City government for more than 30 years. He became executive director in 2014, following the retirement of Kathleen Kotarba. After working in several private sector restoration jobs, he joined the city agency in January of 1994 as a contractual employee and became a permanent staff member later that year in the entry-level position of ‘historic preservation analyst.’ After CHAP’s staff merged with the city’s Department of Planning in 2004, he worked his way up as City Planner I, City Planner II, co-executive director after Kotarba’s departure and then executive director since October of 2014.
Holcomb said his final day has not been set, but it will be sometime between now and November of 2025. He said he has a lot of accrued vacation days but wanted to give notice now so the city would have time to identify a successor, and possibly for him to stay on with the planning department for a transition period after his replacement is named.
Holcomb said he plans to remain in Baltimore but isn’t looking to move to another job within city government. He said he has a number of projects he wants to pursue, including possibly updating his book, The City as Suburb: A History of Northeast Baltimore Since 1660; writing one about the planned community of Montgomery Village, and teaching.
He said he believes the executive director of CHAP is one position where an individual can still have a big impact on the quality of life in the city, even though preservationists face increasing pressure not to stand in the way of redevelopment. He said CHAP’s director can be instrumental in helping the city determine what ought to be preserved for future generations at a time when values are changing and people are questioning what deserves to be saved.
“We’ve always had an inferiority complex,” he said of preservationists. “Now it seems we have an identity crisis: What are we preserving?”
The executive director of CHAP is a critical job in city government because the office plays a key role in determining the fate of landmarks and historic districts that make up much of Baltimore’s urban fabric. It provides staff support to an 11-member citizens panel that has legal authority to review and approve plans to alter the exteriors of thousands of buildings in 36 local historic districts and more than 200 local landmarks throughout the city, and it manages a local historic preservation tax credit program.
CHAP’s mission statement is: “to enhance and promote the culture and economy of Baltimore through the preservation of buildings, structures, sites and neighborhoods that have aesthetic, historic and architectural value.” Unlike Baltimore’s urban design and architecture review panel, which serves in an advisory capacity to the planning department, CHAP has the final say in many situations.
The citizens panel is appointed by the mayor and meets monthly to make decisions about applications that range from the routine to the controversial. Hearings have involved projects such as the demolition of numerous buildings on the west side of downtown to make way for new development; the cleanup of the Hendler Creamery site in Jonestown after a developer walked away from a $75 million mixed-use project leaving an 1890s-era building partly dismantled; the deconstruction and reconstruction of the Mayfair Theatre’s front façade; and how much of the Martick’s restaurant building to preserve.
One of CHAP’s most controversial cases was a developer’s request to tear down the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre at Baltimore and Charles streets for a proposed development that still hasn’t materialized 10 years after demolition began; in that instance CHAP supported a request to designate the theater a city landmark but Baltimore’s City Council never passed legislation to make the landmark designation final and the theater was reduced to rubble.
Over the past several years, Holcomb helped execute a plan to send several Confederate statues, taken down in 2017 but still owned by the city, to Los Angeles for inclusion in an exhibit entitled MONUMENTS planned by an arts-oriented non-profit called LAXART.
Holcomb has a liberal arts degree from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a master’s degree in Preservation Studies from Boston University. In 2016, he was awarded the Mayor’s Medallion for Meritorious Service and in 2018 the honorable mention award for the Richard A. Lidinsky Sr. Award for Excellence in Public Service. He is married and has two sons.
Holcomb actually holds two positions in city government. Besides serving as executive director of CHAP, he is the chief of the Historical and Architectural Preservation Division of the city’s planning department. In that capacity, he oversees a staff of preservation planners and is responsible for participating in budget preparation and personnel duties; meeting with City Council members; providing historic preservation expertise to department-wide projects and coordinating the management and stewardship of outdoor monuments and historical objects with other city agencies.
According to a job listing posted on the city’s website, the salary range is $93,622 to $149,726 a year. It is not a Civil Service position.
The job listing states that the executive director’s “essential functions” and responsibilities are to: designate Baltimore City’s historic districts, landmarks and potential landmarks; review all exterior alterations proposed for properties in a designated historic district or for a designated local landmark or potential landmark; review alterations proposed for city-owned structures, and provide technical assistance and historical information to the public.
The director is also responsible for administering pre-rehab and post-rehab design review for the Baltimore City Restoration & Rehabilitation Tax Credit and assisting applicants in the tax credit application process; working with the Mayor’s Office and other city agencies to conserve and maintain city-owned outdoor sculpture and monuments; conducting historic resource surveys; complying with federal laws to provide preservation recommendations for federal- and state-funded projects; integrating historic preservation recommendations into the planning department’s activities; creating and maintaining the city’s Inventory of Historic Places; participating in the Section 106 review process with the Maryland Historical Trust and surveying and documenting historical structures according to the standards of the Maryland Historical Trust.
The position is one of the few Baltimore City government positions in which the job holder can’t be fired by the mayor. According to Article Six of the Baltimore City Code, the executive director of CHAP is selected by the commission itself and that panel has the final say on whether the director can be fired. Article Six states that the city’s planning director can suspend or dismiss the head of CHAP, but only “with the approval of a majority of the commission.” That language protected Kotarba after then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked then-Planning Director Thomas Stosur to oust her because she wouldn’t support granting a demolition permit for the Mechanic Theatre and a majority of the citizens panel wouldn’t back Stosur with his request. Kotarba retired two years later.
Article Six of the city code requires current City Planning Director Chris Ryer to submit a “satisfactory” list of at least three “qualified” candidates to the preservation commission to consider. Holcomb said the commission likely will appoint a selection committee to review Ryer’s list, culled from applications received, and potentially interview candidates before making a decision in a closed session. He said the city has already received half a dozen applications and more are expected.
Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland and the 29th-most populous city in the country. It has more public monuments than any other city per capita in the country and is home to some of the earliest National Register of Historic Places districts in the nation, including Fell’s Point (designated in 1969); Federal Hill (1970) and Mount Vernon Place (1971). More than 65,000 properties, or roughly one in three buildings in the city, are listed on the National Register, more than any other city in the nation.
The city of Baltimore has a tradition of hiring from within its own ranks to replace its CHAP directors. Holcomb was in-house when he replaced Kotarba, and Kotarba was in-house when she replaced the director before her, Barbara Hoff. CHAP was established in 1964, making it one of the oldest preservation commissions in the United States.
