Despite the 90-day hold on demolition permits for buildings determined to be historic by the city, Miller says that some city council members have used aldermanic prerogative to fast-track the eventual destruction of significant structures. But more often than not, Miller says that communities and preservation advocates simply do not have enough time to line up a buyer or produce a plan for adaptive reuse when demolition threats surface. — Chicago Magazine
With all its rich architectural history, is Chicago facing a preservation crisis? In recent years, many of the city's most historic buildings — despite being flagged by preservationists for their architectural or cultural significance — are being abruptly demolished.
According to Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago,“neighborhood preservation advocates have been stretched beyond capacity in recent years, overburdened by frequent demolitions,” he says in Chicago Magazine.
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So some of the buildings that preservationist want to protect are old coal fired power plants or buildings, like the masonic hall or the Uptown theater, that are way out of life safety code compliance to function as an assembly space and would require more money to rehab than to tear down and build new buildings. Many of these buildings are not suitable for new uses. To further add to the problems is the inability for alderman to stand up to the NIMBY folks who only want suburban single family housing in their neighborhoods. This leaves two options 1 abandon the building and let it fall into decay because local residents and alderman block the opening of a concert venue, banquet hall or other commercial or residential use or retrofit 2 demolish the building saving money on liability insurance and turning it into a profitable parking lot or single family homes. One Chicago way of doing the parking lot thing while dealing with the historic preservationist is to gut the first floor, abandon the upper floors and use it as a covered surface parking lot, sad but not a total loss of historic buildings.
Over and OUT
Peter N
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