Columbus Dispatch: Central Ohio housing market still looks good for buyers, not sellers

The link to the story and graph is here


Dispatch Analysis

Central Ohio housing market still looks good for buyers, not sellers

Sunday, February 6, 2011 02:58 AM

By Jim Weiker

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Real estate, like baseball, thrives on numbers. Hardly a day passes without a new statistic measuring some part of the housing industry.

To navigate the statistical sea and provide perspective on the often-competing figures, The Dispatch examined four key measures of the central Ohio housing industry during a full decade: home sales, building permits, foreclosures and home prices.

Although details vary, the figures paint a clear overall picture: The housing industry in central Ohio, as elsewhere in the nation, peaked in the middle of the decade and has spiraled mostly downward since.

Some observers think the spiral is far from finished, but others think the worst might be over.

What the numbers mean to consumers depends on where they stand in the market.

Buyers - especially those who don't need to sell a home - are driving the train. With mortgage rates historically low, prices down and inventory up, the real-estate mantra "There's never been a better time to buy" rings pretty true.

"The guy who has nothing to sell, is working, has a down payment and is living somewhere month to month - that is your best-positioned person out there right now," said Stephen Hutchinson, president of State Wide Appraising and Broker One Realty in Columbus.

Sellers - especially those who paid top-dollar during the boom from 2003 to 2007 - are facing a tougher road.

Prices in some areas of central Ohio have held better than others, but most sellers should expect to get less for their home today than they would have three or four years ago. The notion is especially true for sellers of condominiums or homes in the price range of $400,000 to $800,000, where inventory is high and demand is weak.

The best-positioned sellers are those with a home priced from $150,000 to $300,000 in stable, high-demand areas such as the Clintonville neighborhood, Grandview Heights, northwest Columbus and Worthington - all of which saw an increase in the average sales price last year.

"If I were a buyer, I'd look to the more-established neighborhoods - the Clintonvilles, the Worthingtons, the Arlingtons, older neighborhoods that have stood the test of time," advised Cynthia MacKenzie, an agent with Keller Williams Capital Partners in Worthington.

On the other hand, sellers who are trading up still could come out ahead. They might take less for their home, but they'll offset the loss when they buy a more-expensive property.

"If you're a move-up buyer and you sell your $200,000 home and take a 5 percent discount and buy a $400,000 home at 5 percent discount, you're ahead," noted Rick Benjamin, president of the Columbus Board of Realtors.

For buyers and sellers alike, though, the big question remains: Will prices go lower?

The short answer: No one knows.

Illustrating the challenge, two national real-estate-information services - Clear Capital and Fiserv Case Shiller - studied similar data for Columbus (including home prices and demographic and employment trends) and arrived at opposite conclusions.

Clear Capital predicts that prices will rise 2.1 percent this year in the Columbus area, making it the fifth-healthiest market in the nation. Fiserv Case Shiller, however, foresees central Ohio prices dropping 2.8 percent in 2011 (but rising 1.3 percent next year).

Some indicators suggest that prices might be at or near the bottom. The average sale price of a central Ohio home ($158,893) was only slightly below that of the previous year ($159,840), the smallest decline in several years.

But the 2010 housing sales were fueled with federal money, which won't be around this year.

Such figures also can be tricky because they measure only the average price of homes that sold, not the average value of all homes.

More important, they vary radically from community to community and neighborhood to neighborhood. (To find out how your community fared last year, visit the Columbus Board of Realtors' website, www.columbusrealtors.com ; click on "housing statistics" under "news" and search "areas" statistics for December 2010.)

Perhaps the biggest drawback of such statistics: They tell you only where prices have been, not where they're headed.

When it comes to forecasts, it's impossible to overlook the elephants in real estate's living room: foreclosures and short sales (homes that sell for less than the balance on their mortgage).

Such homes typically sell for well below their normal market value. One example: A foreclosed house on San-bridge Circle, a few blocks west of downtown Worthington, sold last year for $170,000; similar area homes typically command $230,000 to $250,000.

As long as foreclosures and short-sale properties are a large part of the market, they will depress prices of conventional homes, meaning that prices must be dropped to compete - another plus for buyers but not for sellers.

How important are foreclosures in the central Ohio market? Consider: More than 13,000 properties were foreclosed upon in central Ohio last year, while about 20,000 homes were sold altogether.

Not all of the foreclosed properties ended up back on the market. Some were financially resolved, some were commercial properties and many were sold directly to investors.

Still, between 30 percent and 36 percent of all homes sold in 2010 in central Ohio were distressed properties, according to most estimates. Such properties remain heavily concentrated in Columbus' poor neighborhoods but can be found throughout central Ohio.

"Foreclosures have a 100 percent impact on prices," Hutchinson said. "Even if you have only one or two in Bexley, Worthington, Upper Arlington, they still compete against the other homes in that market. Those have got to be liquidated to get (price) increases."

Even though foreclosure filings dipped a bit last year in central Ohio after steadily rising for a decade, there's little reason to think that foreclosures are going away anytime soon. The number of Ohioans behind on their mortgage is as high as ever; and jobs, though returning, aren't arriving with any speed.

Finally, there are the homebuilders, who've largely stood on the sidelines during the housing downturn. Last year, they built about one fourth the number of homes constructed during the industry peak.

The lack of new construction has been brutal for those in the industry but good for buyers, who can find a better deal on a new home now than they could have a few years ago.

"You get a lot more home today than you did then, during the peak of the boom," said Mark Braunsdorf, owner of Compass Homes and president this year of the Central Ohio Building Industry Association.

"Plans are more efficient; and material prices, land prices and labor prices are at recent historic lows."

Braunsdorf and other homebuilders are convinced that a backlog exists in the demand for homes.

Their case: The number of homes sold and built in central Ohio has shrunk sharply during the past five years while population has continued to rise (even more than during the boom).

Those who in normal times would have bought a home are now renting or bunking with family or friends, waiting for the right time to purchase.

But landlords, who have invested millions in high-end apartment complexes in central Ohio during the past year, aren't convinced. They think some would-be homebuyers have been scared out of the market, possibly for years.

Braunsdorf noted that in normal times, before the crazy years of the boom, about 5,000 new homes a year were built and sold. For three years running, that number has shrunk to about half that.

"I do believe there's pent-up demand," Braunsdorf said. "There is some natural demand even in a potentially shrinking economy, and Columbus isn't dead. It's still growing."

jweiker@dispatch.com

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Columbus Dispatch: A spirited endeavor

The story with more pictures is here

Two new Columbus distilleries put lightning in a local bottle

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 02:53 AM

By Robin Davis

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Looking for a Christmas present for her brother, Connie Trein opted for a stylish bottle of OYO vodka made by Middle West Spirits near the Short North.

"I heard about it from friends," said Trein, 46, of the South Side.

"I was surprised to hear there was a distillery in Columbus."

In fact, Columbus has two distilleries -- both of which opened last year.

In addition to Middle West Spirits, in business since July, Watershed Distillery near Grandview Heights started selling gin and vodka in December.

The small operations are among only four micro-distillers in Ohio but a growing number nationally -- more than 250, or a 25 percent increase from 2009, said Bill Owens, president and founder of the American Distilling Institute in Hayward, Calif.

A micro-distiller, he said, is defined as one that makes 60,000 proof gallons (gallons with 50p ercent alcohol) or fewer a year.

By comparison, Absolut Vodka produces more than 2 million proof gallons a year.

Another comparison: At full capacity, Watershed makes about 23,400 bottles of vodka a year; and Absolut, 600,000 bottles a day.

The interest in small distillers, Owens said, is traced to the movement to buy, eat and drink local products.

Spirits are arriving last to the party, it seems, because home distilling is illegal.

"Home brewers were the springboard for craft beer," Owens said. "We don't have that with distillers."

Indeed, the "local" movement inspired the Columbus distilleries.

"I lived in Switzerland, played professional volleyball," said Greg Lehman, head distiller and co-owner of Watershed.

"The town I was in had local everything: soft drinks, cheeses, spirits."

Upon his return to the United States in 2003, he noticed that he couldn't buy only local products.

"My buddies and I were taken by the fact that there were a lot of microbrews in Columbus but no spirits."

Brady Konya and Ryan Lang, co-owners of Middle West Spirits, sought to make spirits not only in Ohio but also with as many Ohio ingredients as possible.

"We wanted to make a vodka with a distinct sense of place," Konya said. "If you're going to produce something with a distinct sense of place, it has to be sourced locally."

Middle West buys soft red winter wheat grown and milled in Fostoria, about 90 miles north of Columbus, for OYO.

For the honey- and vanilla-infused vodka that it has produced since December, the distiller uses wildflower honey from Lancaster. (The vanilla is obtained from Uganda, Konya said with a smile, because "We don't have good vanilla in Ohio.")

Watershed makes its vodka from corn but, as yet, limits its sourcing to the Midwest, not exclusively Ohio.

In creating the products and opening the businesses, both companies faced a learning curve.

Lehman joined a silent partner in 2007 to begin planning a distillery, but they needed time to acquire funding.

Without banks willing to underwrite them, they had to find private investors. Then, after leasing the space and purchasing a still in September, they had to fine-tune the recipes.

"We're by no means master distillers," Lehman said. "We learn every day. We've made every mistake you can make. There are variations in every batch."

Middle West has a similar story.

The owners presented their business plan to more than 20 banks before obtaining funding from Key Bank in Cleveland.

When they started producing the vodka with a custom-made Kothe copper still, they had an output of about 50 percent below industry standards -- so they hired a chemist for help.

"It took eight months to fine-tune the recipe," Konya said.

Early responses to the products of both companies have been positive.

The newly opened Hubbard Grille in the Short North features OYO vodka in its Hot & Filthy Martini, a $10 drink splashed with olive juice and garnished with two jalapeno-stuffed olives.

"It's quite popular," general manager Daniel Morris said. "I'm a huge fan of their product and what they do. I think that product is, flat out, one of the best-tasting to come along in a long time."

Bill Glover, chef and owner of Sage American Bistro in the Ohio State University area, considers himself a big fan of Watershed and especially its gin.

"It's one of my favorite gins I've ever tasted," he said. "It's got an amazing flavor profile."

He uses it in a drink called Vespers, which includes Watershed gin and vodka along with Lillet Blanc and a splash of tonic.

With the distillers up and running, both are looking toward the future.

Watershed is aging bourbon for 2013.

Middle West has a whiskey to release in March and plans to make eau de vie and other liqueurs. (Because aging in barrels takes months to years, many micro-distillers first produce clear spirits -- which require no aging.)

Two distillers in a single city don't necessarily compete, according to the companies.

Lehman appreciates the awareness that Middle West draws to the art of micro-distilling.

The real competition, Konya said, comes from the big distillers.

"There is plenty of room on the shelf for both of us."

If you go

• Middle West Spirits is at 1230 Courtland Ave. Open houses are offered at 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays and by appointment. OYO vodka is sold at the distillery and at various stores. For a list, call 614-299-2460 or visit www.middlewestspirits.com.
• Watershed Distillery is at 1145 Chesapeake Ave., Suite D. Tastings are available by appointment only. For where to buy Watershed gin and vodka, call 614-357-1936 or visit www.watersheddistillery.com.

robin.davis@dispatch.com

The Washington Post: The Impulsive Traveler: Columbus, Ohio, a new destination for food lovers

The story is here

By Jane Black

Special to The Washington Post
Friday, January 28, 2011; 2:27 PM

The very first thing I did after signing up to move to the far west of West Virginia for six months was to log on to Mapquest. I'd be living in an entirely new and unfamiliar area of the country, and I wanted to know where my husband and I could go to eat.

The options were limited. Charlottesville, Va., Asheville, N.C., Knoxville, Tenn., all cities with reputations for good food, are more than five hours' drive away. It takes seven hours to get home to Washington and eight hours to get to Memphis. Only 21/2 hours away, though, was Columbus, Ohio, a city I'd never thought much about visiting, let alone considered a culinary destination.

Shows what I know.

The once-conservative Ohio capital has blossomed into a certified food lovers' town, with serious cocktails and microbrews, pastries worthy of Paris, fantastical ice cream flavors - think peanut with toasted coconut and chili - and extraordinary food shopping. In November, food guru Michael Ruhlman, who had dismissed Columbus as "Applebee's country" on an episode of the TV show "No Reservations," very publicly revised his judgment, calling the city a worthier food destination than his beloved home town of Cleveland.

A case in point is North Market, the city's food hub. Open year-round, the airy converted warehouse hosts 35 vendors: butchers, bakers and ice cream makers. Local food gets lots of shelf space - we found Ohio-milled grain, grass-fed beef and Lake Erie-caught walleye - but so do international delicacies such as imported cheese, wine and spices.

We stocked up on supplies (including a case of a terrific 2005 French Bordeaux priced at a glorious $11 a bottle). But we also filled our bellies in preparation for an afternoon of exploring. We shared a fragrant, yeasty cinnamon roll from Omega Artisan Baking and lingered over a case stacked high with potato-and-cream-cheese pierogis at Hubert's Polish Kitchen. But with the wind chill, it felt like 11 degrees outside, so we settled on two giant bowls of pho at Lan Viet Market.

After polishing off the aromatic Vietnamese beef noodle soup, garnished with mint, basil and bean sprout, we were warm enough to forget the blistering cold and justify dessert next door at Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Founder Jeni Britton Bauer is one of the city's gastronomic heroes. Her market shop, along with six others throughout the city, offers about 30 flavors, such as Bangkok peanut (the one described above), brown-butter brittle and young Gouda with vodka-plumped cranberries, which sounds awful but tastes like decadent cheesecake.

Almost all Jeni's flavors feature local ingredients. That cranberry-soaking vodka comes from Middle West Spirits, an artisanal distillery a short distance from North Market. Housed in a renovated auto garage, Middle West, with its concrete floors, white subway tiles and salvaged turn-of-the-century antiques, looks more like a SoHo loft than a Midwestern manufacturing plant. But style doesn't trump substance. Smack in the center of the space is a stunning, custom-made copper still.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, vodka must be colorless, odorless and tasteless. And while Middle West founders Brady Konya and Ryan Lang don't officially disagree - that would be illegal! - they do everything they can to make their vodka, OYO, taste distinctive. The wheat, a soft, red variety, comes from just 25 miles outside Columbus. The liquor is distilled only once, which leaves a velvety feel in the mouth and a hint of sweetness on the finish. This is vodka for sipping neat.

OYO is available by the glass at Mouton, a spare-but-elegant cafe and cocktail bar a few blocks away. But the draw there is the classic cocktail list, which limits itself to excellent renditions of Prohibition-era classics: aviations and negronis, Manhattans and Mary Pickfords. (This is a stark contrast to many of the slick bars along the trendy Short North strip that seem to trade exclusively in cloying mocha martinis and cosmos.) The drinks are excellent: strong, smooth and never sweet. Still, after one, we switched to wine, all the better to go with Mouton's carefully curated list of American cheese and charcuterie, such as a salami, scented with black truffles, from Utah.

Brunch is a meal I generally find disappointing: a blur of stodgy pancakes and rubbery eggs that not even hot sauce can save. (A "punishment block for the B-team cooks, or where the farm team of recent dishwashers learn their chops," is how Anthony Bourdain described it in his memoir, "Kitchen Confidential.") But all is redeemed at Skillet, a cozy 32-seat bistro in Columbus's historic German Village. The pancakes are fluffy and filled with shredded apples and farmer cheese. The omelets are stuffed with organic potatoes and house-cured sauerkraut spiced with pear and caraway, a nod to the neighborhood's heritage. And, just to make the already tough decision about whether to go sweet or savory even harder, chef Kevin Caskey offers dishes such as breakfast risotto: Arborio rice cooked in milk, then dotted with velvety bits of caramelized apples and salty bacon and finished with a scoop of mascarpone. Only a truly skilled cook could make something so indulgent taste light.

We had planned to walk off our meal as we toured German Village. But blustery winds and snow forced us to tour the narrow streets in our car. The tidy brick cottages and ornate Queen Anne Victorians are some of the city's most desirable homes. But that wasn't always the case. Settled in the early 19th century, the neighborhood grew quickly as waves of German immigrants arrived in Ohio. But the world wars stirred up anti-German sentiment and the area fell out of favor. By 1950, the neighborhood was considered a slum.

Over the past 20 years, young professionals and empty-nesters have resettled the neighborhood, which in addition to offering historic housing stock is a short commute to downtown. Stylish boutiques and restaurants soon arrived to serve them.

Pistacia Vera is testament to the changing neighborhood. For decades, the building it's in housed two no-frills family bakeries. But in 2004, siblings Spencer Budros and Anne Fletcher renovated the space into a chic patisserie with exposed brick walls, marble-top tables and bentwood chairs.

It would have been easy to sell muffins and ubiquitous cupcakes, Fletcher told us. But the pair was determined to restrict the menu to classic French pastries - croissants, brioches, palmiers and an excellent fig-cardamom braid - and elaborate desserts and truffles. Their most popular item? Technicolor macarons that come in seasonal flavors such as yuzu, caramel pecan and maple walnut.

A dozen made the perfect snack for the car ride home.

Black is a former staff writer for The Washington Post Food section.

Columbus Dispatch: College graduates no longer leaving Columbus, new report says. City has been fighting "brain drain"

Read the story here

Columbus shows gains in keeping college graduates

Brookings Institution report indicates a turnaround

Monday, January 24, 2011 11:06 AM

By Mark Ferenchik

The Columbus Dispatch

Columbus might not be shedding college graduates like it had in previous years, and that bodes well for a city that has struggled to keep its best and brightest.

A Brookings Institution study released this month shows that metropolitan Columbus gained residents 25 and older with college degrees at a rate of 0.16 percent between 2007 and 2009.

That's a marked turnaround from the previous three years, when Columbus lost those residents at a 0.23 percent rate.

Brookings demographer William H. Frey reviewed data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey and wrote that the poor economy had a lot to do with an overall national trend of people staying put.

Bill LaFayette, chief economist for the Columbus Chamber, said that some college grads might not be able to move because their houses lost value.

"If you have a house under water, it sort of ties you to a place," he said.

Officials have created several efforts to keep college graduates here.

That includes Compete Columbus, formed by the chamber and the Columbus Partnership to focus on growing certain industries, including health care and logistics, and Grants for Grads, a state programs offering home-buying incentives for recent college graduates.

2010 Central Ohio home sales show market improvement

2010 Central Ohio home sales show market improvement

Home sales statistics for central Ohio in 2010 showed marked improvements compared to previous years according to the Columbus Board of REALTORS® (CBR).

The average sale price of a home in 2010 was $158,893, just 0.6 percent lower than the average price of homes sold in 2009. However, the average price of homes sold in 2009 was 2.4 percent lower than 2008 which was 5.1 percent lower than 2007.

“Our market saw average sale price increases for eight of the 12 months of 2010,” says CBR’s 2011 President Rick Benjamin. “As we’ve experienced annual decreases in our average sale price since 2005, we see ending the year just half a point lower than 2009 as a positive for central Ohio homeowners.”

The 1,460 homes sold in December 2010 is just 0.3 percent lower than the number of homes sold in December of 2009. Annual 2010 home sales (19,676) finished 2.8 percent behind 2009 (20,235).

“There’s no question the home buyer tax credits had a significant affect on last year’s home sales,” adds Benjamin. “Providing home buyers with a substantial monetary incentive really helped to energize the market in the first half of 2010.”

“Homes in contract (which are expected to close in January or February) are up slightly from the previous year suggesting that home sales in the first of the year could be strong.”

Homes spent an average of 90 days on the market, a reduction of seven days from the average time to sell a home in 2009.

In December 2010, the month's supply of homes was down to 9.93, the lowest since last June. Month's supply is the ratio of inventory to sales which takes into account both supply and demand. A healthy market has a 6.5 to 7-month supply of homes, meaning if no new homes were added to the market, it would take about 6.5 or 7 months to sell all the available homes.

The Columbus Board of REALTORS® Multiple Listing Service (MLS) serves all of Franklin, Delaware, Fayette, Madison, Morrow, Pickaway and Union Counties and parts of Champaign, Clark, Fairfield, Hocking, Knox, Licking, Logan, Marion, Muskingham, Perry
and Ross Counties.

Click here for additional central Ohio housing statistics.

Click here for Ohio home sales statistics

Click here for the national home sales release

President Obama names Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman to federal historic-preservation panel

A link is here

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

January 18, 2011

President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Michael B. Coleman, Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
• Horace Henry Foxall, Jr., Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
• Bradford J. White, Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
• Carole E. Goldberg, Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
• Theresa M. Pouley, Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
• Ted Quasula, Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
• Norma Lee Funger, General Trustee, Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

President Obama said, “I am proud to appoint such impressive men and women to these important roles, and I am grateful they have agreed to lend their considerable talents to this Administration. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

Mayor Michael B. Coleman will be appointed to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in addition to his duties as Mayor of Columbus, Ohio.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Michael B. Coleman, Appointee for Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Michael B. Coleman was elected mayor of Columbus, Ohio in 1999 and was reelected in 2003 and 2007. As mayor, he has focused on rejuvenating downtown Columbus by initiating Neighborhood Pride, a proactive effort to engage residents and businesses to fix up thousands of homes and clean up their neighborhoods. Mayor Coleman also created the Affordable Housing Trust Corporation to provide more housing options to inner-city residents and led the restoration of the historic Lincoln Theatre and the landmark Lazarus Department Store building in downtown Columbus. He received his B.A. from the University of Cincinnati and his J.D. from the University of Dayton Law School.

Horace Henry Foxall, Jr., Appointee for Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Horace Henry Foxall, Jr. recently retired as Manager of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Center of Expertise for Preservation of Historic Structures and Buildings. For more than three decades, Mr. Foxall assisted the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, and other Federal agencies in developing historic preservation projects and programs, advising staff, architects, engineers, and outside consultants in the execution of historic building preservation. Mr. Foxall currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He received his M.Arch. in Architectural Design and Urban Design from the University of Washington and his B.S. in Urban Development and B.Arch. in Architectural Design from the University of Oregon.

Bradford J. White, Appointee for Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Bradford J. White is a Principal of Brad White & Associates in Evanston, Illinois, providing development consulting on affordable housing and historic resources. He is the former Senior Vice President of Acquisitions and Development at The Habitat Company LLC. Prior to joining Habitat, Mr. White was Vice President of Related Midwest LLC, where he was responsible for the acquisition, financing and development of affordable and market-rate housing. He serves on the board of the Illinois Housing Council and is past chair of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois and Preservation Action. Mr. White received a B.A. in economics from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from DePaul University.

Carole E. Goldberg, Appointee for Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
Carole E. Goldberg is currently the Jonathan D. Varat Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where she directs the Joint Degree Program in Law and American Indian Studies and serves as faculty chair of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center. She is also a Justice of the Court of Appeals of the Hualapai Tribe in Arizona. Ms. Goldberg is author of numerous books and articles in the fields of Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law, and has been the Principal Investigator on major grants from the National Institute of Justice to study the administration of criminal justice in Indian country. In 2006, she was the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Previously, Ms. Goldberg served as an Associate Dean of UCLA Law School. Ms. Goldberg holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Smith College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Theresa M. Pouley, Appointee for Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
Theresa M. Pouley is currently the Chief Judge of the Tulalip Tribal Court. She is also an Associate Justice of the Colville Tribal Court of Appeals, and a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Northeast Washington. Judge Pouley has served as the President of the Northwest Tribal Court Judges Association since 2005, and on the Board of Directors for the National Tribal Court Judges Association from 2003 to 2004. From 1999 to 2005, Judge Pouley was the Chief Judge of the Lummi Nation. In 2009, she worked with the Department of Justice as a facilitator for the “Tribal Nations Listening Session”, and in 2010 she facilitated a “Focus Group on Human Trafficking of American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Children” developed by the Office for Victims of Crime. She has also worked and lectured with the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts on domestic violence and Indian law issues for the last several years. Judge Pouley frequently lectures at local, state and national conferences on Tribal Courts and Indian law issues, and makes regular presentations at the University of Washington’s Indian Law Symposium. In 2005, The National Tribal Child Support Association named her Outstanding Judge. Previously, Judge Pouley practiced law in Michigan and Washington until her appointment to the bench in 1999. She continues to teach Indian law at Edmonds Community College, and previously taught at Northwest Indian College. Judge Pouley holds a B.A. from Gonzaga University and a J.D. from Wayne State University Law School.

Ted Quasula, Appointee for Member, Indian Law and Order Commission
Ted Quasula is currently the General Manager of the Grand Canyon Skywalk located on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. He is a member of the Hualapai Tribe in northern Arizona. Previously, Mr. Quasula served as chief of police for the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe from 2003 to 2007. He also served for 26 years in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement Services within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he worked his way up from field criminal investigator to Director of the national program from 1990 to 2000. Mr. Quasula started his law enforcement career with the Flagstaff, Arizona, Police Department in 1972. Currently, he serves as Chairman of the Nevada Indian Commission and Vice-President of the Board of Directors for the Northern Arizona University Alumni Association. Mr. Quasula is a graduate of the Government Program for Senior Executives at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in police science and administration from Northern Arizona University.

Norma Lee Funger, Appointee for General Trustee, Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Norma Lee Funger has been in the real estate business for more than 27 years. She has served the arts in many roles, including as a member of the Board and Nominating Committee of the National Symphony Orchestra, the National and International Committees for the Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center, the Leadership Benefactors and Laureates Circle of the Kennedy Center, as a Commissioner for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Trustees Council for the National Gallery of Art and its Collectors’ Committee, and as a board member of the Washington Performing Arts Society, serving on the Society’s Impresarios and Nominating Committees. Ms. Funger also serves on the Foundation Board of the Children’s Hospital National Medical Center.

ACHP Website is here

Mission statement

The mission of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is to promote the preservation, enhancement, and productive use of our nation's historic resources, and advise the President and Congress on national historic preservation policy.
—adopted by ACHP membership May 31, 2002

Introduction

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) is an independent federal agency that promotes the preservation, enhancement, and productive use of our nation's historic resources, and advises the President and Congress on national historic preservation policy.

The goal of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which established the ACHP in 1966, is to have federal agencies act as responsible stewards of our nation's resources when their actions affect historic properties. The ACHP is the only entity with the legal responsibility to encourage federal agencies to factor historic preservation into federal project requirements.

As directed by NHPA, the ACHP serves as the primary federal policy advisor to the President and Congress; recommends administrative and legislative improvements for protecting our nation's heritage; advocates full consideration of historic values in federal decisionmaking; and reviews federal programs and policies to promote effectiveness, coordination, and consistency with national preservation policies.

ACHP Activities

The ACHP's 23 statutorily designated members, including the Chairman who heads the agency, address policy issues, direct program initiatives, and make recommendations regarding historic preservation to the President, Congress, and heads of other federal agencies. Members meet four times per year to conduct business.

An Executive Committee, headed by the Chairman and Vice Chairman, governs agency operations such as management, budget, legislative policy, and oversight of the most prominent Section 106 cases. Also serving on the Executive Committee are the Departments of Interior and Defense and ACHP members who chair three standing committees that correspond to the ACHP's three program areas.

• Preservation Initiatives focuses on partnerships and program initiatives such as heritage tourism to promote preservation with groups such as state and local governments, Indian tribes, and the private sector.

• Communications, Education, and Outreach conveys the ACHP's vision and message to constituents and the general public through public information and education programs and a public recognition program for historic preservation achievement.

• Federal Agency Programs administers the National Historic Preservation Act's Section 106 review process and works with federal agencies to help improve how they consider historic preservation values in their programs.

A Budget and Planning Committee is convened under the direction of the Vice Chairman and advises the Chairman and management on budget formulation and execution, management and implementation of the strategic plan, and serves as the audit committee on behalf of the membership.

A professional staff that supports the ACHP's daily operations is headquartered in Washington, D.C.