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Originally Posted by City Wide
My sarcastic take on this----The only reason Fiebush is 'saving' any of the old buildings is so the 20% federal tax credits of historic preservation can kick in. I fully suspect that as much as possible of the construction budget will on paper show up as being spent of preservation. Plus why spend piles of cash to take down a perfectly fine smoke stack (a money making cell phone antenna farm) when you don't have to.
I'm surprised this plan passed (apparently) the requirements of the interior dept. to qualify for the tax credits. Fiebush has been known to push the envelope in his quest to demo anything older then around 40 years. (which is just around how old he is, any correlation?) Why should this project be any different.
Fiebush might be a very good developer and seems committed to the City (whatever that means) be he seemingly has no sense that a lot of the soul of the City is in its 'oldness' and once that is gone it ain't coming back. I can't imagine that any of his, or most of todays low rise projects, will ever earn any respect for what they add to the City.
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I too was extremely disappointed with the far less than 'half a loaf' that will be kept, but to be fair, I found out (from Ori Feibush) that the cell phone antennae have been inactive for a while, with their services moved to a dedicated tower in the next block. Those will be going away.
Ori really likes that smokestack, which he considers 'iconic.' I'm somewhat less enamored of it. The original 1800s smokestack, elsewhere on the site, has been gone for eons. The current smokestack is part of the boiler house that was built when Wanamaker took over circa 1912, so it's not really tied the original manufacturing activity.
As far as the tax credits, I'm sure he will apply, but I don't know whether the credits will be approved or not. We'll see.
FWIW, the wooden columns, such as from the 1865 core building, are supposedly going to salvage (old growth lumber is very durable, so the columns are mostly in very good shape) and at least much of the exterior brick will be re-used on-site.