Church bulldozers again: "Potential threat to one, if not two, historic buildings in downtown New Albany."

The following e-mail came to NAC from Greg Sekula, who is director of the Southern Regional Office of the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana.

Against all odds, the senior editor has elected to exercise restraint in jumping to scathing conclusions about the tendency of downtown churches to be woefully unresponsive to issues pertaining to historic preservation. Instead, let's just permit Greg to tell the story.

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I want to alert you about a potential threat to one, if not two, historic buildings in downtown New Albany. For several months, Historic Landmarks has been involved in conversations with trustees of Centenary Methodist Church concerning the fate of the fire-damaged Frank Marsh house at 417 E. 4th Street. The house, which was the home of local author Greg Seidel and his family, sustained damage in a December 2006 fire. While the damage appears on the surface to be extensive, a site visit and tour of the house has revealed a building that generally is still structurally sound on the first and second floors with some water and surface damage. A limited portion of the roof structure will likely require some rebuilding or reinforcement.

However, the building, in HLFI's opinion, is certainly salvageable and would be conducive to adaptive re-use for office or retail use with plenty of parking in the area that could be leased for the new use (including parking owned by the church which sits largely unused during the weekday).

Centenary Methodist also owns a grass-lawn vacant lot two doors to the north which it purchased with the intent of developing a children's playground on the site. This never materialized and the church has been maintaining the vacant lot. Between the vacant lot and the fire-damaged house is a brick c. 1840 Federal style townhouse that is privately owned and reported to be available for sale.

Initially, Centenary was on a demolition track for the house and was going to leave the lot vacant with no immediate plans for re-development. This would further the erosion of the urban fabric in this section of the downtown which we believe is antithetical to on-going revitalization efforts. After some discussion and persuasion, the trustees appeared amenable to working with HLFI to attempt to market the house in its present state. The idea that was discussed as late as last Friday with a church rep. was to have the church clean-out the house (using its insurance proceeds - cost between $1200-$1700) to make it a bit more attractive to potential buyers and to work with HLFI and local preservation advocates to advertise the house for a minimum 30-day period at $15,000 (price verbally desired by the church which reflected, in its opinion, the value of the vacant lot).

Ed Clere, a local real estate broker, offered his assistance to place the property in the MLS for this abbreviated period. A clean-out estimate was obtained last Friday. However, this morning, I received a call from a church trustee indicating that the trustees yesterday had decided to pursue demolition. The hope was to package the vacant lots with someone who might also want to purchase the brick house in between and redevelop the property. This would mean ultimately the demolition of the two historic structures remaining on the block!

I have asked the church trustee to go back to the Board and see if the church would consider a sale of the house "as is" and the vacant lot it owns as well to alleviate the interest in land speculation that seems to be driving the church in its decision-making. I can't say at this time if HLFI could play a role here given our current "active" project portfolio, but will consider it in order to avoid the inevitable loss of both buildings.

I would love to partner with another local non-profit to save this block. Ideas are welcome here. Will keep you informed of the situation. In the meantime, if any of you know of members of Centenary who might be sympathetic to a preservation approach for this property, please let me know ASAP, and we can try and see if they can exert any influence with the trustees.

(Photos courtesy of Greg Sekula)