State tells Lincoln Park to save the Mellus

Thursday, February 25, 2010 | Source: metromode

A Michigan Historic Preservation Officer has sent a strongly worded letter to the Lincoln Park Downtown Development Authority, urging local officials to save the Mellus Newspaper building in the Downriver suburb's downtown.

"The rehabilitation of a historic building utilizing potentially available Historic Tax Credits and Brownfield Tax Credits can have much broader economic benefits to the surrounding area than demolition of the building for vacant property," State Historic Preservation Officer Brian D. Conway writes in the letter. "What we recommend ... is that the building be mothballed for continued marketing to potential developers. That is, minimal repairs should be made to the building to make it safe and to avoid damage from water infiltration and vandalism. The option of making a building sound for future redevelopment is more in line with the stated goals and mission of the Lincoln Park DDA than creating a vacant lot."

Conway's letter also questions the DDA's intentions of purchasing the Mellus, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The letter says the building should have been marketed for redevelopment with adjoining structures instead of moving so aggressively toward demolition, a move that is "in violation of the spirit and intent of the DDA Act."

"Your report provides no discussion of how and for how long the Lincoln Park DDA marketed the building for redevelopment, nor is there any discussion of attempts to package redevelopment incentives, such as federal historic tax credits," Conway writes. "Indeed, because the Lincoln Park DDA's ownership of the building has been so brief, we question how a sufficient marketing effort would even have been possible in such a short time."

Whether or not city officials follow the recommendation has yet to be shown. The DDA's attorney, David Tamsen, sent a letter earlier this week saying that if any member of the DDA board requests a special meeting about the building by Friday, the board will reconsider the issue. Otherwise "the board's previous decision to demolish the buildings will be implemented." Leslie Lynch-Wilson, president of the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance and a proponent of saving the Mellus, said she expects the demolition will be discussed at the DDA's regularly scheduled meeting on March 11. The future of the historic building remains in flux until then.

Lynch-Wilson maintains the DDA never made a good-faith effort to redevelop the building and bought it with only the intention of demolition. In fact, she believes the buildings could be redeveloped right now but some city officials are stubbornly against any sort of reasonable redevelopment of the Mellus.

"We all know why they bought it. Because Frank Vaslo (Lincoln Park's mayor) wants to tear it down," Lynch-Wilson says.

And so the Mellus building sits awaiting a firm decision on its future. The 1940s-era building at 1661 Fort St. served as the home to Lincoln Park's local newspaper, then owned by William Mellus, for generations. The Mellus still has its original porcelain enameled Moderne commercial building exterior, while the adjacent Pollak (named after Pollak Jewelers and also up for demolition) retains its terrazzo entrance sidewalk.

The buildings had been vacant for several years before the Lincoln Park DDA purchased them last year. Some city officials call them blight, but the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance argues that their salvation is an important step toward preserving downtown Lincoln Park's heritage and encouraging business and job creation. In fact the LPPA even recruited a developer who wanted to rehab both buildings and another adjacent one the DDA also owns so he could move his business to Lincoln Park. This could have created dozen of jobs. The DDA turned him down because the two sides could not agree on a price for the third building.

Source: Martha MacFarlane Faes, cultural resource protection manager for the Michigan Historic Preservation Office and Leslie Lynch-Wilson, president of the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance
Writer: Jon Zemke