Tuesday, December 2, 2008 9:18 PM CST
House built in 1850s blocks traffic in Springfield
By KEVIN McDERMOTT, Lee News Service
SPRINGFIELD — Here in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown, history and politics often intersect.
And a two-story antebellum house on wheels sits at that intersection today — blocking traffic downtown, stoking tempers at City Hall and making some well-intentioned history buffs think twice about their latest cause.
“We thought this was an opportunity to save something,” said Springfield businessman and preservationist Court Conn, who owns the house and the property it’s supposed to move to — but who hasn’t been able to set it down since mid-November because of a dispute with the city over funding.
“Now I can hardly sleep,” he said.
Conn and his nomadic house are at the center of a fight on the City Council over how much of the bill Springfield should foot to help preserve a building with strong ties to its most famous resident.
“It was facing the wrecking ball in a couple days ... and we were kind of left holding the bag,” Conn said. “Maybe we should have had the wrecking ball.”
The episode has disrupted more than just traffic in this capital city, which has often been accused of failing to preserve its own history. The issue comes to a head at a City Council meeting tonight, at which Conn will press the city to provide $280,000 in tax-increment financing to pay for a foundation on which to set the house.
Even now, crumbling, dilapidated and perched on a relocation platform over massive wheels, the 3,200-square-foot brick structure is impressive. Like a lot of historic homes around here, it’s got a name — Maisenbacher House — and a story: Lincoln is said to have loaned a Springfield neighbor $650 toward its construction in the 1850s.
None of that, of course, explains how it came to be parked in the middle of Jackson Street, behind “road closed” barriers and orange plastic fencing, for the past two weeks. That part of the story is more complicated, and more expensive.
It began a year ago, when a Springfield medical clinic that owned the house was preparing to tear it down for a parking lot. The clinic agreed to put off the demolition and help pay the cost of moving the house off the property, if someone would agree to take it.
That’s where Court and Karen Conn came in. The couple, who already owned a historic inn in town, were approached by preservationists about accepting the house and setting it on a lot they own a block from Lincoln’s home and turning it into an inn.
The house would require extensive renovation. The Conns took it on, Court Conn said, largely because of a verbal agreement with Mayor Tim Davlin that the city would help cover the cost of relocating and renovating the house, with an eye toward providing another Lincoln-era site for a local economy heavily dependent on historic tourism.
“We agreed to get involved, but we didn’t agree to pay the moving costs,” Conn said Monday. “I would think the (structural) foundation is part of that.”
City Council members had a different understanding. They had approved the expenditure of $115,000 to help clear the new site and move the house there. Over a weekend in mid-November, the St. Louis-based company Expert House Movers lifted and slowly transported the fragile structure five blocks, parking it on the street in front of the new site.
That’s where things got complicated.
A deadline set by the medical clinic to get the house off its old site had required the move to start before the new foundation was ready. Davlin, the mayor, an early champion of the project, asked the City Council to approve an additional $822,000 in tax-increment financing funds for siting and renovating the house.
Aldermen balked, saying they’d been blindsided with the new request. Davlin argued that the Maisenbacher House project was the epitome of what the city economic development money should be used for.
Meanwhile, the house continues to sit just off the intersection of Jackson and Seventh streets.
Davlin’s spokesman Ernie Slottag on Monday reiterated the mayor’s position that the house is a worthy project for the city’s involvement: “It is unique architecture and there’s a significant Abraham Lincoln connection.”
But Slottag disputed that Davlin had made guarantees of funding before the Conns started moving the house. “He’s in support of doing whatever we can to save it, but I’m not sure anything was promised.”
Davlin has since scaled back his request to the council, and will ask them for whatever it takes to get the foundation quickly built and “get it off the street,” Slottag said. The full council is expected to take up the matter at its regular meeting today.
Even if that money is approved, Conn says, he’ll have a long battle to prevent the episode from being a complete fiscal loss. He estimates more than $1 million is needed to complete the renovation, much of which he had thought the city might cover because of the downtown economic benefits.
Conn points to St. Louis’ downtown loft renovations and other projects as an example that Springfield should be following. “There’s nothing cheap about historic preservation ... (but) tourism is the only thing (Springfield) has left,” Conn said. “This city just doesn’t seem to get it.”
Contact Kevin McDermott at kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com or 782-4912.
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