Which is more of value?

Historic Armory to be Demolished in the Face of Economic Vitality

By Lucia Stewart, 2-26-08

Downtowns are fragile areas in our Western landscape as the increase of big box stores sprout up and retailers sprawl outward from our cities’ core. Local commissions and groups seek out economic infusion, and sometimes as the cost of historic preservation.

In a hard decision on Monday night, the Bozeman City Commission decided to give the green light for the destruction and demolition of the 1941 Bozeman Armory, an art-deco style building listed on the National Register of Historic Places located in Downtown Bozeman.

The replacement will be a new 4-story, brick and glass façade building highlighted to have environmental qualities including an earth-covered roof laden with trees, water features and a glass lounge.

“We need to encourage investment downtown,” said Commissioner Jeff Krauss. “We need to look at what downtown needs now and in the future. It’s not just about building east and west, but also north and south.”

Bozeman has acquired over 1 million square feet of retail space on North 19th last year, an area not in the vicinity of downtown and is having economic impacts on downtown businesses.

There was 1 letter of support for the demolition, 50 signatures on a petition, and 43 letters of opposition, including letters from the Montana Preservation Alliance, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Montana State Historic Preservation Office and the Bozeman Historic Preservation Advisory Board.

In order to demolition a National Registered Historic Building, which shows architectural, social, cultural or historical importance, the building must pose a threat to public health, be beyond repair and/or have no viable useful life remaining.

Despite the 18-inch concrete shell, the developers’ architects, Bechtle-Slade, didn’t see the building fit for redevelopment, citing lead paint, asbestos, failing roof, outdated mechanical and electrical structure, and the raised 1st floor four-feet from the pedestrian sidewalk as non-conducive for retail space. The Commission, the Bozeman community and the National Historic Preservations Boards didn’t quite equate these facts to “no viable useful life remaining.”

The Bozeman City Planning Staff recommended a two-year stay on the Armory’s demolition to explore alternatives for redevelopment.

But then the conversation turned to the economic viability of Bozeman’s downtown.

The building has sat vacant for almost five years, except for one brief stint but renters were evicted when the winter bills and rent income didn’t pencil out. Before this, the State of Montana had abandoned the surplus building.

Then in September of 2003, in the wake of Dick Clotfelter’s grandiose plans for building the Arts and City Center in the heart of downtown Bozeman, the City assisted in acquiring the building from the state in order to be sold to a private developer.

With the community overwhelmed with excitement on the Arts and City Center project, many wrote-off the Armory’s destruction as a worthy trade in the new development. Due to this and not wanting to threaten the value of the bids, the city didn’t deed the inability to demolish the building. Clotfelter’s plans fell through and the building was sold.

Since that time, the inefficient occupancy issues have unfortunately left this historic building to graffiti and vandals, and created a vacant block in downtown Bozeman.

When the developers’ representative stated that the building would most likely be sold if approval wasn’t received that night— since they’ve been working on the site for over two years — the Commission’s discussion took the path of downtown’s economic viability as a whole, not just localized on one building.

Commissioner Eric Bryson did make the point that the applicant did only the bare minimum to prove the economic inability of the building, as no financial numbers were shown to prove redevelopment was not an option.

The developers, Michael Libster and Thomas Nygard, have planned the demolition as soon as possible to being construction on “The Willson,” named after the architect of the historic Armory building.

[End of article]

I think it's a shame the City Commission was so quick to throw away a historic landmark, lured by the promise of a shiny, upscale redevelopment that will be too rich for many Bozemanites. Good thing the Emerson was repurposed before this City Commission was in office. The developer and architect throw in buzzwords like LEED, green roof, and environmentally friendly but did the Commission pay attention to the caveat "if economically feasible"? Let's not fool ourselves, there will certainly be an added cost to redevelop this property in an environmentally responsible way. Will sustainable measures be dropped as soon as costs rise a cent above projections?

Many downtown homeowners are handicapped from remodeling homes of far less architectural value because of the historic overlay district. Why do these same rules not apply to a major downtown building designed, at least in part, by Bozeman's local architectural legend? We don't need more eyesores like US Bank in this town. People come to Bozeman because of its unique character, they don't want Anytown, USA. I hope the Commission doesn't continue to lose sight of this fact in their mad rush to rebuild Bozeman.

I am a very disappointed Bozemanite at the City Commission's decision to permit the destruction of the Armory. I believe this decision will prove to be as regretful as it is historic. It seems Bozeman's commissioners are dizzy with the idea that economic vitality only results when gleaming new buildings are erected. Yet examples of historic AND economic vitalization (occurring simultaneously) exist in the droves. A number of these examples were presented to the City Commissioners on Monday night, but they seemed to fall on deaf ears. At that meeting, I was appalled by the nature of the commission's discourse. From the beginning, it was clear the decision had already been made. An honest debate over this decision did not occur. Rather, City Commissioner's questions were focused on the details of how the Armory would be disposed of, and on the plight of Bechtle/Slade's rigorous and frustrating design review history with the city.

At Monday's meeting, much ado was made of the the fact that, at no prior time did previous commissions take action to 'save the armory.' While these decisions were made by previous commissions, our current commission chose not to reconsider these decisions on their own. Instead they chose to remain consistent with these previous decisions. Why? Why did our commissioners choose to defer to previous decisions? (Is everyone afraid of being called a 'flip-flopper' now?) This seemed a perfect chance to rethink the design opportunity presented by the armory, yet our current Commissioners squandered it. In this case, the City Commissioners seemed as starved for a backbone as "The Wilson" building design is for creativity.

At a particularly telling and poignant moment in Monday's meeting, the owner's suggestion that, were a 2 year stay to be placed on the project, they would likely sell the property. Suddenly, the commissioner's cards were on the table. It felt like a lethal threat had been made to the commissioners and the city of Bozeman. It saddens me that my elected City officials waffled so easily. It implied that, 'if we don't eat this, we won't get fed.' Not surprisingly, those same 'threats' were use to bring us that loathsome box-town wasteland of Bozeman's North 19th Avenue.

We all have regrets in life. It remains to be seen whether or not the city commissioners regret their decision to destroy the armory. I know I will. The armory may look gray, but saving it is the greener option by far. I don't care how much grass or how many trees you put on the roof of the building that replaces it. I am personally saddened by the wasteful nature of a decision to destroy the armory and the implied notion of a loss of cultural and historical identity. The lack of balanced due process and discourse of the city commission on monday night was troubling to me. While I recognize the importance of economic vitality, I believe it is a component of a larger 'system' that makes our city a great place to live - but not the only one. For most of us, I don't think we've forgotten what we love about Bozeman - but I'm worried that our City Commissioners have.

The armory never had anything to do with what I love about Bozeman. Downtown's economic vitality, now, that does have a lot to do with what I love about Bozeman. Reinvestment in downtown is critical to keeping a fragile commercial neighborhood vital. A new building, with eyes on the street in the condos, with parking for the residential under the building, with first floor retail spreading a block to the north next to the new parking garage, and opening Mendenhall up to becoming a second street of retail, was far more important to downtown than an old concrete shell designed to hold sherman tanks and a firing range.

Making it difficult to do infill development downtown versus easy greenfield development on the edge of town is exactly the wrong incentive for the new urbanist ideas embodied in Bozeman's 2020 plan. And the new building would have been a slam dunk, very welcomed, on almost any greenfield site in town. Why then, wouldn't it be welcomed in that piece of town most identified as the heart of town?

Advocates of "preserve at any cost" lost any credibility a couple of months ago when, in a hearing over adaptive reuse of the Rialto theatre, they opined that they'd rather it be vacant and unused than converted from a theatre. As if a vacant, feces spotted doorfront on Main Street downtown is a good thing for anyone. They compounded that by attempting to fine and censure the owners of the Rialto for sending the theatre seats off to the burned down and in need theatre in Anaconda. It was only after sending out a letter of violation that they took the time to find out the seats were from the 70s and not historical at all.

The only waffling the commission did was towards preservation. It was a 5-0 decision during the last commission and it essentially was that Monday night. There's been a five year intent to tear that old building down since it was slated to be torn down and replaced by a performing arts center.

The Commission didn't hear from the "development community" on this one. The Commissioners "listened to the neighborhood" . They heard the parking commission and the downtown business boards and downtown property owners like the woman with eight decades of Bozeman history who overwhelmingly supported the new project.

Economic vitality, commerce, IS what the downtown is all about. If it's a city full of old buildings and no economic vitality you're looking for, it's a short trip to Virginia City. You don't have to "intend" to make downtown a ghost town, it can just happen as an unintended consequence of "good intentions".

We don't want downtown to be a museum, we want it to be a place where people live and shop and do business, and those business make money. That's what keeps downtowns vital.

Many developers would look at the armory and see it as "in the way of their vision" . It seems to me that many have lost the moral of working with what they have and wasting as little as possible. I also see that many Bozeman residents have submit themselves to change and in so doing blinded themselves to the imense waste of a perfectly usable building and loss of history. One day we will look
back and see that allowing the armory to be torn down was a mistake. Although many residents don't see it, Bozeman is going through a second urban renewal phase; one that has and will cost Bozeman much of its history.