Preservationists decry Expo demolition

WATERLOO | Downtown boosters say they're concerned about the ongoing demolition of older buildings adjacent to the city's center.

Plans for a recently demolished Expo High School building site are still up in the air. For the Peoples Community Health Clinic, which owned the building, the demolition is a divestment of a potential liability a neglected building too expensive to bring up to modern code.

"By getting the building down, it's safer," saidChris Kemp, chief operating officer of Peoples Clinic. "It's no longer a deteriorating building."

For historic preservationists, the demolition at 927 Franklin is just another example of planning missteps that has hollowed out the city's core.

"We've already lost a significant number of historic buildings,"said Jeff Kurtz, executive director of Main Street Waterloo. Main Street Waterloo is affiliated with the national Main Street program, which emphasizes economic development through historic preservation.

The site will likely be vacant for some time.

"At this time, we don't have any plans with the property," said Kemp.

The demolition came a few months on the heels of demolition of the former WBM Marine building at 401-409 Franklin St. That site is home to a strip mall.

The Fourth Street corridor in downtown has rejuvenated mostly due to a stock of remaining historic buildings along the street, Kurtz said. That success hasn't spread to surrounding blocks mostly because the area has seen decades of demolition, he said.

"If you level too much of it, you're left with a smaller downtown surrounded by a doughnut of vacant lots," said David Deeds, controller for JSA Development. "I have yet to be shown a city that demolished its way to prosperity."

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Preservationists decry Expo demolition