10-22-12 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING OCTOBER 22, 2012 Jesse Davis, P. O. Box 10205, South Bend, Indiana, advised that this is no different than the school board president wanting to get rid of the teacher because she is too old. He urged the Council to grant designation. The following individuals spoke in opposition to this bill. Jim Masters, 211 W. Washington, South Bend, Indiana, Attorney for the St. Joseph County Public Library, advised that the Library acquired the Avon Theater building in March of 2007, for the specific purpose of demolishing it to make way for the new main library to be built in 2018/2019. Prior to the library’s purchase of the building there was interest shown in that building by a local theater group. It was determined then that the building was in such bad condition that it was not economically feasible to restore the building for use as a theater. The library owns every building on the block bounded by Main St.; Wayne St.; Michigan St.; and Western Av. All of those buildings were purchased at the time when the seller was willing to leave the buildings and vacate. The buildings are all abandoned. The library is surrounded by abandoned buildings. The library cannot expand south because the alley to the south is the location of numerous utility easements that serve downtown South Bend. So the long range plan developed by the Library Board to expand the library building on the east side of the north/south alley, with Wayne Street on the North, Michigan on east and Western to the South. In the spring of this year the Library announced its plans to demolish the Avon Theater and the other vacant buildings that surround the Library. In July, without any prior notice to the Library, without the opportunity for the Library to be present, the Historic Preservation Commission held a public meeting, put the Avon on under interim protection to stop the demolition of the building. The Historic Preservation Commission then submitted the Bill No. 35-12 to declare the Avon Theater Building an historic landmark. There was no evidence presented before the Historic Preservation Commission that the Avon Theater building is historic in any way. The job of the Historic Preservation Commission is to develop facts and evidence to present to you to support a recommendation to declare a building to be historic. Instead, the Historic Preservation Commission wants to tell the Library board where to build a library and when to build a library and how to build library and how much money to spend on a library. None of that is within their jurisdiction. The Library Board is a dually constituted agency that services eight (8) of the thirteen (13) townships in St. Joseph County has a population of over 166,000 residents and over 200,000 library card holders. Its jurisdiction far exceeds that of the Historic Preservation Commission, which by the way, has absolutely no fiscal responsibility, no responsibility for expenditures of tax payer dollars. The Avon Theater building is not historic in any way, it was not the registry of Historic local landmarks when the library purchased it 2007. At the October th 8 meeting of the Zoning & Annexation Committee, chaired by Councilmember Oliver Davis, he informed the Council then, that the library director and the director of Historic Preservation had entered into a memorandum of understanding to recommend to their respective boards a resolution of this dispute. Under that proposal the library would remove the terra cotta from the building, give it to the Historic Preservation Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission would withdraw this bill and allow demolition of this building. The following week, last week, October 15, 2012, the majority of the Historic Preservation Commission voted to reject that memorandum of understanding proposed by their Director and forced a decision on whether the building should be demolished on you. He pointed out that the Council’s appointee to the Historic Preservation Commission did vote to accept the memorandum of understanding. He also noted that the Director of Historic Preservation claims that proposal as being the best compromise that could be faced. He informed the Council that at its meeting tonight the library board adopted a resolution that former resolution is contained in the binders given to the Council by the library as “exhibit x”, it is the last document in your binders. By this resolution the library board states that if the Common Council rejects Bill No. 35-12 which will thereby allow the library to demolish the Avon Theater it is nonetheless the intention of the library board to have the terra cotta removed prior to demolition. The Library Board voted tonight to allow a contract with a contractor that specializes in building excavations to photograph, inventory and remove the terra cotta prior to demolition. The library will store the terra cotta and will decide later on whether to offer the terra cotta for sale, to donate it to a group for preservation, to use some or all of it in the new main library building or some other use for the terra cotta. 12