Demolition discussed for Bender home

Attorney says renovations would be too costly

07/14/2010 10:00 PM

By IAN FULLERTON
Contributing Reporter

No Comments - Add Your Comment


1157 W. Drummond Pl.

With a potential sale on the horizon, the owners of a vacant home in Lincoln Park have asked residents for their support in a bid to demolish the building.

Executors of the estate of the late musician and model Fred Bender have filed for a permit to demolish the two-unit home at the corner of Drummond Place and Racine Avenue where Bender lived until he passed away a year and a half ago.

The home is now owned by Fred’s brother, Ralph Bender, who currently resides in San Antonio.

With a $1.7 million price tag, the property at 1157 W. Drummond Place has been on the market for a year. But recently a prospective buyer has stated an interest in building a new home on the property, said Bernard Citroen, attorney for the project.

Built in the Victorian “Eastlake” style with a second story porch and an ornate “gingerbread” facade, Citroen estimated that the building was completed around the early 20th century. The property also contains two coach houses, which would be razed if the permit is granted.

The home is rated orange in the city’s historic resources survey, meaning a 90-day delay was triggered when the owners applied for the demolition permit.

Citroen told members of the Wrightwood Neighbors Association at their July meeting that while the structure is pleasing to the eye from the outside, the building would be a near impossible rehab.

“It is a property that is in flux at the time,” he said.

In a letter to a city’s deputy commissioner for landmarks, Citroen argued the home featured several weak points that would rule out any potential landmark status for it. He stated that the porch was not original and that the building was non-conforming in regards to density, parking and floor-area-ratio.

Before the WNA, Citroen also noted that the building would require extensive and costly interior and electrical restoration.

“The estate doesn’t have the funds to fix up and bring [this building] to a landmark designation,” he said.

Lincoln Park resident and Wrightwood Neighbors member Allan Mellis had hoped the city and residents could find a way to save the building from demolition.

“[This] home is one of the few architecturally significant residential buildings left in our community,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published recently in Skyline.

Mellis suggested that the building be landmarked “with the associated tax credits that would come with restoration, which would help the prospective buyer to restore rather demolish this significant building.”

The pending demolition at 1157 W. Drummond Place brings up the bigger issue of the inadequacies of the city’s policy toward orange-rated buildings, said Jonathan Fine, executive director of the architectural watchdog group Preservation Chicago.

“Other than the 90 days, there really isn’t any other disincentive for tearing down historical buildings,” he said, with such a rating.

Fine’s group has proposed a demolition tax for orange-rated building to deter the razing of older buildings — a tactic already implemented in places like Evanston and lake Forest.

“It would still be legal to tear down a significant building, but it would make it somewhat more painful,” he said.

The demolition permit request for 1157 W. Drummond Place was not scheduled to go before any zoning or historic landmark committees this month.


No Comments - Add Your Comment