President & CEO Nicholas Redding testified today, in front of the federal subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands (NPFPL), in support of H.R. 4494 to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to acquire land in Frederick County for the Historic Preservation Training Center (HPTC) of the National Park Service.
Preservation Maryland powers The Campaign for Historic Trades, creating hands-on opportunities for individuals looking to explore, build, or expand historic trades careers, many of which take place at the Historic Preservation Training Center, an immeasurably valuable resource in Frederick.
The bill, the Frederick Jobs and Historic Preservation Training Center Land Acquisition Act, would provide the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Training Center the ability to acquire a roughly 10-acre tract of land from the City of Frederick to expand and build out a trades’ training campus to meet the growing preservation needs of the National Park Service and help train the next generation of historic tradespeople around the nation.
The Center supports the maintenance and rehabilitation goals of the Great American Outdoors Act and provides a cost-effective method of meeting the vast challenges of that endeavor by training existing staff in repair methods and appropriate maintenance.
Without the trained hands to restore our nation’s unparalleled heritage many historic resources could and will be lost. The Training Center serves a critical, but often overlooked role, in making that work possible and this legislation will secure their future and by extension, the future of our nation’s past.
Redding’s testimony begins at 1:26:36: