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The city’s Heritage Preservation Commission has been at odds with current building owner the Hass family, incorporated as The Fenigor Group LLC, over a change made to the windows to make the North Side landmark more energy-efficient.
Commission member George Hammond suggested the owners replace a portion of the southern St. Andrew Street side with a large bank of windows to give it a look of how the building once was, and let the owner renovate the rest with a combination of smaller windows and split concrete block.
Commission members plan to look at the building again to see how that would work and make a decision in a special meeting or their regular March 15 meeting.
In November, 2004, former owner Tarkman Associates Inc. agreed to a historic preservation covenant, which says no part of the south and west facades can be removed or demolished and no physical or structural change or change in color or materials made without the commission’s approval.
Last fall, the company renovated the first floor windows without review and approval by the commission, in violation of the covenant. The owners replaced vertical banks of three 5-by-5-foot windows with one 5-by-5-foot window and split-faced cement block.
When commission members learned about the new windows, they asked the company to halt the work, which it did.
Since then, the commission and The Fenigor Group have been attempting to reach agreement. The Group wants to move the La Crosse Mail Center, which it owns, into the building, said Terry Hass, facilities manager.
The fewer windows comply with state energy codes, Hass said, and the Group’s architect, Jerome Saterback of La Crosse, has advised that replacing the old, larger windows, even with energy-efficient windows, would not meet Wisconsin’s current requirements.
The cost to heat the building with the original number of windows would be so high, he added, a business could not be competitive.
“We like our look,” Hass said. “I do not agree that people in the city think the old is a good look — it’s an old factory look.”
Building renovation plans submitted to state for review had no exterior or window work, Ronald Buchholz, deputy administrator, Division of Safety and Buildings, Wisconsin Department of Commerce, told the Tribune on Thursday.
The state review was interior renovation plans only, Hass agreed, but said energy efficiency was one of the requirements to gain state approval on those plans.
The owner of a historic building has the choice of going by the current building code or by the state’s historic buildings code, designed to give more latitude to keep a building’s historic characteristics while still addressing safety and health concerns, Buchholz said.
Joan Kent can be reached at (608) 791-8221 or jkent@lacrossetribune.com.
After re-reading the article and giving the matter further thought wrote on Feb 17, 2007 3:39 PM: