Columbia’s Historic Preservation Study Should Be Understood As PR, Not Policy
A study commissioned through Columbia's historic-preservation apparatus credited preservation activity with thousands of jobs and very large amounts of economic activity over the preceding decade. It also attributed a sizable portion of that activity to Missouri's historic-preservation tax credit.
Those findings deserved more skepticism than the headline numbers suggested. Economic-impact studies can make projects look exceptionally productive by applying multipliers to spending without adequately considering opportunity costs—especially the alternative uses of the tax dollars committed to the subsidy. Missouri's own official analyses had historically produced far less flattering estimates of the tax credit's fiscal return.
The study's purpose also mattered. Its framing made clear that promoting historic preservation and the associated incentive programs was part of the exercise. That does not make every statistic false, but it means policymakers should treat the document as advocacy material rather than as a neutral cost-benefit analysis.
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