Alexandria (Map, News) - The challenges of historical preservation in Alexandria will be a key focus at a conference this weekend touted as a chance to plan how best to move the city into the future.

“We have to have harmony of moving forward while preserving,” said Historic Alexandria Foundation Executive Director Mary Sterling.

Funding is always an issue when it comes to preservation, according to Jim Mackay, acting director of Historic Alexandria.

“Every one of these sites needs some sort of work,” Mackay said of the city’s historical properties. “We’re talking about old buildings that may not have been maintained well over the last centuries.”

The costs of caring for such properties mount exponentially, Mackay said. And there are other challenges. For example, Alexandria’s museum, The Lyceum, is a stucco building that was improperly painted with latex paint in 1990. That paint is peeling off because stucco needs to be colored, not painted, Mackay said.

It can take longer to find contractors qualified to work on old buildings, Mackay said. It took the city several years to find qualified contractors to bid on coloring The Lyceum, for example.

There are also lots of different kinds of preservation and ways to determine what should and shouldn’t be saved, Mackay said.

An unusual example is the city’s Fort Ward, whose packed earth walls date from the Civil War. A seasonal cycle of seeding and fertilizing grass keeps the walls from eroding, said Susan Cumbey, director of the fort.

Another challenge for owners is working within the web of protections for Alexandria’s older buildings. The exteriors of those in the protected historical district of Old Town cannot change without permission of the city’s Board of Architectural Review.

Sterling said the board’s strict guidelines will be discussed at the convention, with a view to making them more consistent.

A number of organizations monitor historical easements on Alexandria buildings. These legal documents pass from one owner to the next, barring anyone from altering the inside or outside of an old building.

mhegstad@dcexaminer.com