What has long been rumored is now official: an application for a permit to demolish the Bostwick Building has been filed with the City.
The application was filed by the building’s owners, said Amy Harrell, Downtown Vision Inc. director of district services, Wednesday at the organization’s monthly board of directors meeting.
The building is old enough to be designated historic, but not legally protected as such.
Harrell said there is no longer a roof on the structure and City fines have accrued to the point that the owners wish to have the building removed from the site along East Bay Street at the foot of the Main Street Bridge.
Former City urban planner and Riverside Avondale Preservation coordinator Jennifer Hewett-Apperson was hired by DVI to replace Harrell, who is resigning effective Aug. 29. She said the permit application will be reviewed by the City’s Historic Preservation Commission, who will have 60 days to make a recommendation on the permit.
If the commission defers the issue and makes no recommendation before the deadline, there will be an additional 90-day period during which an application for the building’s designation as a historic landmark may be filed by the owner or another party, including the City.
“If it is torn down, we send a message that it’s OK to tear down historic buildings Downtown,” said DVI board member Oliver Barakat.
He suggested that DVI advocate for the preservation of the building.
“This is an entrance to Downtown. If it comes down and there’s silence, the message is history is not important Downtown,” Barakat said.
Former DVI board member Jim Bailey, the publisher of Financial News & Daily Record, attended the meeting. He said that even though Henry Klutho – the architect who designed many of Jacksonville’s historic buildings constructed after the Great Fire of 1901 – at one time had an office on the second floor of the building, it has deteriorated to a point preservation or repair would be extremely expensive.
“With no designated funding source it won’t matter, at some point it will become a hazard and end up in the street like the Center Theater,” Bailey said, referring to the razed, historic Downtown theater whose roof collapsed in 2002.
DVI Executive Director Terry Lorince said the organization will review the situation and likely will issue a position statement in regard to the demolition permit application.
In other news, the board voted to elect John Ream, principal of Connect Integrated Marketing, as a small property owner/tenant. Ream purchased a two-story building along East Bay Street and renovated it into an apartment and office space, where his marketing firm is located.
The board also voted to renew the terms of members Debbie Buckland, Mike Jennings, Dan King, Vince McCormack and Robert Arleigh White.
The DVI board of directors’ public meeting is scheduled at noon the fourth Wednesday of each month in the 23rd-floor conference room at SunTrust Tower.
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