Lincoln Park writes final chapter for Mellus building

Thursday, May 20, 2010 | Source: metromode

Leslie Lynch-Wilson can't do much but shake her head as the Lincoln Park resident watches her downtown change, providing a playbook on how not to be sustainable.

The Lincoln Park Downtown Development Authority followed through on its promise to demolish the historic Mellus Newspaper building last week, despite a strong recommendation from state officials to preserve it and offers from business owners to renovate it and create jobs. Most of the former home to the Downriver community's local newspaper has now been trucked off to a landfill.

"It's sad," says Lynch-Wilson, president of the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance and an advocate of saving the building that was on the National Register of Historic Places. "There was so much talk of recycling items in the old building. What I observed was just tearing it down and sending it to a landfill."

She adds that the only parts she saw recycled or reused were a brick she took home and a piece of galvanized pipe she saw the demolition contractor load into his pick-up truck. The rest went off to a local landfill in a handful of semi-trucks. She points out that a number of the historic interior fixtures, its metal panels, windows, and an Arts & Crafts-style interior door could have easily been saved to help restore other similar buildings, but local officials did nothing.

"The city is 30 years behind the times," Lynch-Wilson says. "They don't think about these things."

City officials originally talked about turning the Fort Street property into a parking lot, but then promised to build a pocket park or green space there when the controversy over tearing down the structure hit its peak. Lynch-Wilson says no architectural plans for a park have been produced, no money has been set aside, no one has stepped up publicly to spearhead the pocket park project, and local officials are starting to talk about a parking lot again even though there is a sea of parking in front of and behind the buildings left on that block.

"They're talking about laying off 18 police officers this year," Lynch-Wilson says. "No one has money at the city and everybody knows it."

The city is now looking at tearing down what Lynch-Wilson calls one of the few brick Victorian buildings in the city, even though it is still privately owned. She says the vacant house at 1132 Lafayette Street is listed as built in 1922 but she believes it dates from between 1890 and 1905 and was moved to its current location when the neighborhood was subdivided from farmland in the early 1920s. A public hearing on its proposed demolition is set for June 21.

"It's one of the two brick Victorian homes of that period that we have left," Lynch-Wilson says.

Source: Leslie Lynch-Wilson, president of the Lincoln Park Preservation Alliance
Writer: Jon Zemke