Eliot Kleinberg: Q&A with Friederike Mittner, West Palm Beach historic preservation planner

In today's Palm Beach Post is a Q&A with a City of Lake Worth resident many of you will be familiar with. From the article: 

Friederike Mittner talks the talk and walks the walk. The historic preservation planner for the city of West Palm Beach lives with her husband and two daughters in a 1939 bungalow in Lake Worth, where she was preservation officer before moving to West Palm Beach in 2005. She grew up in a 1924 home in Coral Gables until she came to Palm Beach County in 1998. 

How did you get into the historic preservation business? I got my masters in preservation (Master of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Florida) after I realized historic buildings just have such a great story to tell and they’re much more authentic and interesting to me than modern architecture.

[later. . .]

Are there incentives? For private homes, we have an ad velorem tax program, where the increase in the property value is not taxed for a period of 10 years. That also works for commercial properties. And commercial properties can also participate in the federal tax credit program.