Preservationists Unite - 3 days to City Council Vote!!

[Debbie Thompson]

Help us save this important piece of Jacksonville's heritage.  Another Klutho Prairie Style building is in danger.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,10436.new.html#new


TIME OF THE ESSENCE.  Sign our petition to help save and landmark this important piece of Jacksonville's heritage.  City Council votes THIS Tuesday, 2/25. 

When you sign, each and EVERY member of the City Council will receive an email letting them know of your support for this preservation effort.

http://www.change.org/petitions/jacksonville-city-council-landmark-and-preserve-the-historic-claude-nolan-building?share_id=GpWpXEgTbC&utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

[Kay]

Signed it!

[DDC]

Done and Shared, Mass Mailing to the Council.

[strider]

In case some of you out there share Mr. Bishop's feeling that this building has nothing left because of the newer facade, let's visit the past for just a moment.  In 1948, a successful car dealership thought it would be cool to update their building rather then build a new one some where else.  After all, they had a great location.  They hired an architect, spend endless hours making the right decisions and then put up with the construction for months to finally and proudly get to reveal the new and modern look for their great building. 

That's a fact of life for many old buildings.  Either they get neglected because their owners can't or won't keep them up or the owners are doing well and update the buildings.  In this case, it was the latter and now the facade, like it or not, is historic in itself. It is a good representation of the art moderne style popular at the time. This fact was pointed out at the HPC but seemed to be lost on the LUZ.

Landmarking this building does several things.  It locks in the historic aspects of the exterior appearance.  It allows the building to be mothballed, keeping it and the community safer. It provides the opportunity for financial benefits to help with the restoration.  It preserves a part of history for future generations.  More generically, it keeps a space in existence and viable for a future use so that part of Main Street doesn't look like a wasteland like so much of Main Street currently does.

The other side of this is the cons of giving it landmark status.  What are they?  Costs?  Well, other than the already incurred soft costs of the various meetings, there are none to the city of Jacksonville.  In reality, the City and the State take some amount of responsibility of preserving the building, but Jacksonville has never stepped up to that responsibility as far as I can tell.  Is it against the wishes of the owners, after all, it "removes" property rights?  Well, no, not in this case, as the owners are on board with it. But buildings have been landmarked against the owners wishes before anyway, so not much of a reason.  Let's see, what else can it possibly be?

The only thing I can see is that the original facade had been destroyed so that with the new facade the building doesn't deserve to be landmarked.  Like the owners and the public seems to want. That is in fact historic unto itself and was actually part of the reason the HPC promoted the Landmark status and moved this application to city council. And unlike the Boswich landmarking, which the owners were strongly against, this building is in much better shape, actually having a functional roof.

We also have the interesting fact that this building appeared on the demolition quote request by MCCD.  An interesting question is why this building and why not one of the many that are around in much, much worst shape?  Why such an expensive building to demolish as well? Which set of federal funds was Ms Scott planning on using to demolish this building? 

Here's another interesting fact.  At the first LUZ meeting about this building, the big issue was that the owners were not present and the councilmen did not want to proceed without their input.  With the owners represented at this last meeting, their opinion no longer mattered. Seems more like the LUZ folks were searching around for excuses rather than looking at the facts.

And the question no one wants to ask: Who has called in political favors from many on City Council to make sure this building is not landmarked and why are they doing it?

[IrvAdams]

Good piece, thanks. Definitely answers most questions and then asks the most obvious one, which is "why?". I wish I knew the answer to that.

I signed the petition and passed it on.

[strider]

This is another link to the petition to landmark the Claude Nolan building.