LANDRUM – Historic preservation in Landrum, through oral history recordings and protecting historical buildings in Landrum, was on the Landrum Area Business Association’s April 4 meeting agenda.

Landrum City Administrator Rich Caplan said he is working with the oral history staff at the Spartanburg Library to conduct oral history interviews with residents of Landrum in the next month. He added he hopes to see a museum with these recordings established at the Landrum Depot.

A joint meeting will be held in May with Landrum City Council and Landrum Planning Commission, and one topic to cover will be appointing a board for historic preservation, according to Caplan.

The joint meeting will be held at the Landrum United Methodist Church on May 3 at 5:30 p.m. The city’s comprehensive plan, a document outlining the city’s goals for the next decade, will also be presented as a draft during this meeting.

The board for historic preservation can “be an existing board of the city,” Caplan explained, “and if they concur, we will be submitting an ordinance to the city council in June establishing the board in the city. If it’s the zoning board or the planning commission that acts as the historic preservation board, they will just be shouldering more responsibilities related to historic preservation.”

Caplan explained he would like to see buildings in Landrum like the Landrum Depot, which has already been protected and is publicly owned, be added to a list of historic places for the city to preserve in the future. If the building gets put on a state or national historic preservation list, tax credits would be given to the city.

“The number one purpose is to identify and designate what buildings are worthy of some kind of protection,” Caplan said. “We need to say, and the criteria varies from place to place, is it an event that happened there, or is it the building itself, or is it some other historical event or matter that occurred in that situation?”

Landrum city council members and Mayor Robert Briggs are working on getting an informal list of people to interview for the oral history.