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<br />RECOMMENDATION
<br />There are five parts to the City's Application, but they must be considered all at once in order to
<br />make sense.
<br />1) Removal of asbestos and other "hazardous materials." Specifically, this means insulation,
<br />underground storage tanks, and florescent lights. Staff recommends approval.
<br />2) Salvage of artifacts for use in the community center that the city proposes to build or have built on
<br />the site, or for use in associated buildings in that site. Specifically, the artifacts could include terra
<br />cotta, art tiles, sinks, hardware, vent grills, granite, slate, and limestone, millwork including doors,
<br />cabinets, and woodwork, and even some furniture, 1920 -era light fixtures, hardwood flooring, and
<br />rose - colored interior windowsills.
<br />Salvage of these materials is an excellent idea for many reasons. First they allow
<br />the city, on behalf of the community, to preserve at least some traces of this piece of South
<br />Bend's local history. Second, the re -use at least some of these materials will allow the
<br />construction of a much more magnificent community center than would otherwise be
<br />affordable. Salvage is not cheap, but materials like these would be phenomenally
<br />expensive today, and salvage intelligently managed could provide very expensive materials
<br />at less cost than the purchase of the same materials new.
<br />For instance, windows such as the leaded and stained glass transoms above the
<br />doors would cost ten or twenty thousand dollars to purchase new, and the city may save
<br />them with a couple men on ladders and an ordinary toolbox.
<br />Preservation of the terra cotta and the other stone elements would require a
<br />condition survey of the specific elements to be salvaged, which cost perhaps $12,000 for
<br />the whole building, and those costs would be more than recovered in value recaptured with
<br />the salvage.
<br />3) Demolition of the remaining portions of the building. Kil Architecture has performed a study for
<br />the city, concluding that restoration of the building is not feasible at this time, and the city relies
<br />upon this conclusion in making their request.
<br />4) Preservation of all mature trees on the site. Staff recommends approval of this, especially with
<br />reference to the two very large trees in the front of the building. �G �-
<br />5) Restoration of a clean and level site, leveled with soil (clean fill) and grass, for future
<br />redevelopment of the site to support community and residential uses.
<br />The position of the City is that Oliver is already being demolished by neglect, and that this
<br />unsightly death by inches must stop. It is the city's belief that the process has already proceeded so far
<br />that restoration of the entire building is no longer in the city's power, and that salvage and reuse of
<br />artifacts or important elements, with clean and swift demolition of the rest in the only remedy in their
<br />power.
<br />Staff notes the irony that Slatile bid a mere $40,000 to repair the roof in 1997 (See letter from
<br />Gerald Longerot, Slatile President, 9 -30- 1997), and now five years later, because that wasn't done, the city
<br />expects to spend $450,000, eleven times as much, to tear it down.
<br />'t Or- P-
<br />Staff recommends app oval of all five parts of this Application, with the condition that an
<br />engineering firm of the City% choice perform a condition survey and salvage plan substantiall
<br />similar to that presented by Arsee Engineering in this regard, and that the final salvage plan be
<br />approved by the Commission XCommission staff.
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