Our downtown is littered, like many towns this size, with old (circa 1900) buildings which are not the greatest shape. The problem with the condition of the buildings is exacerbated by the fact we have one particular owner who owns most of the buildings downtown, and he never does any work on the buildings. As soon as they come into his ownership, they begin to rot.
One such building is called the Beauchamp building or the Green building. It was built in 1904 and it had a long productive life before falling idle over the past 20 years. Since then, there has been some interest in the building, but it’s gradually gotten into worse shape. As with other buildings owned by this particular owner, there is a ton of old junk in the building as well.
I serve on the Economic Development Corporation committee in town and as part of that I have a seat (but not a vote) on the Economic Development Authority, which is the decision maker on issues related to business in town. Since the Beauchamp building has been deteorating and was becoming an eyesore, we checked into the availability of the building to see if we could knock it down. The owner of the building does not return calls and is virtually impossible to reach; however, we were able to reach him and get him to agree to sell us the building for $15,000. We bid out the demolition project and received a best bid of $32,000, so it would be a total of $47,000 to take care of this building. That seemed like a fairly steep price, so we checked with a neighbor who agreed to pay for the majority of the project, leaving us with a $8,500 bill. So we planned to move forward with the demolition.
Along the way, the idea of demolishing the building was brought up to another committee which tries to preserve downtown. They made a major media and word-of-mouth blitz to try to seek out a contractor who would renovate the building. Accordingly, we put off the decision until Sep 1 to give them time to find a contractor. We had a couple folks interested, but one contractor in particular came forward asking to work on the project. He came to our meeting just before the deadline and indicated his interested while highlighting his experience with these kinds of projects. He didn’t have a firm estimate of the costs, but believed he could renovate the building into a loft on the top floor and a business site on the lower floor. He expected to spend $70-80K.
Three complications arose in his pursuit of the building. He asked for the committee to give him the building – for some reason unbeknownst to me, we indicated that was unlikely. He also asked for some additional time to get more firm cost estimates from subcontractors (plumbers, electricians, masons) and if that exceeded $100K he wouldn’t go ahead with the project. We also called one of his references from the city he lives in now, and they said he has done some renovations but he’s been behind on some water and utility bills.
As a committee we had two options – proceed with the demolition as scheduled or give the contractor time to firm up his bids and provide him the building for free (with a clawback provision if he doesn’t proceed with the renovation). The latter would jeopardize the amount of the demolition project, but it was likely a $2-3K swing at most. I argued for the latter position insisting that a renovated building in town with 100 years of history would be better than another parking lot – regardless of the $6,500 additional investment. I thought I had some people on my side of the debate, but the debate quickly turned into a chorus of "let’s just get this over with". So instead of taking these risks: giving an ugly building the winter to stand when it’s stood like this for 20 years, a little work to rebid the demolition if we ended up going that route and a potential for a couple thousand dollars wasted, the committee voted 5-0 with two abstentions to knock the building down immediately. I certainly would’ve voted against the project, if I had a vote.
I was dismayed at the lack of vision of the committee. If we’re going to have anything more than a boring, unattractive downtown, we’re going to have take some chances. We have plenty of parking lots downtown, what we need is buildings. I wish the committee would’ve at least given this the winter to see what develops, but they have the attitude that they’ve been burned so many times before, they’re not going to take a chance again. With our policy of knocking down all the unattractive buildings downtown without much thought to renovation, in ten years our downtown will consist of 5 blocks of parking lot and a city hall building. It’ll look real nice.
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