RM 11-16-79 - Laserfiche WebLink

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South Bend Redevelopment Commission Regular Me ting - November 16, 1979 7. PROGRESS REPORTS a. continued... Mr. Robinson: Ted, lid like to ask you a question. I real- iZE you weren't the party that I had a discussion with at a pr vious meeting when Century Mall was proposed and we were talking about buying up the buildings and demolition. At that time John Oxian was here. My question is, if you can ac ieve the goal you're trying to get, what effect would that have on the outside of the structure? Because at that tine John Oxian told me the whole trend of the Historic Preservation Society was to maintain the outside structure anc appearance of what originally was. Now in one of these pr posals, they proposed redoing the whole outside of that building in glass. Now, if you were to achieve what you arE trying to do, in. essence you'd be interfering with that marts right to renovate that building like he wants to. Mr. Wasielwski: bell, that brings up a very good point be- cause one of the reasons I held back on sending the appli- cation was in the hope that we could go to one of the pro- posed developers, if the building was saved. However, with thE threat of the demolition that came out recently in the parer we had no choice but to.send the application. In of er words, one of the reasons we didn't want to send the ap lication was because we wanted to talk to the individual de eloper that was going to be selected. But since the bids came in the thing looked like it was noinn downhill, so we se t the application. Let me explain, there are two desig- nations, actually there are three or more designations of historical structures, Local, National Register, and National La dmark. We are talking about Local and National Register. ThE National Register of Historic Districts has no specific standard associated with it. What that means is that the laws are not written that you can't do this, you can't do that. The impact, the purpose for the National Register of Historic Places and the Tax Reform Act that included the Historical Preservation Act, was to say that federal funds could not be used to destroy the fabric of America, histori- cally. That was the intent, and that's what the intent is in this particular case. The Local Landmark, which we also ap lied for to the City Council after the October meeting, that particular ordinance controls the facade, the outside of the building. That is subject to discussion within the City Council. It's open to public debate and normally, the ow er would be included in the thing, but in this case the ow ership is the City of South Bend and we went ahead. By thE way, that was done 22 months ago with the City Council in view of recent transaction. No, there is nothing, unless the Council would pass a local landmark status on th building, then it would prevent them from going ahead wi h their development. -37-