May 16th, 2011
This Place Matters
To celebrate National Preservation Month (this year’s theme is “Celebrating America’s Treasures”), there will be a meeting at the M State campus in Fergus Falls on Tuesday, May 24th. It starts at 6:00 PM in Legacy Hall. The event is sponsored by The Fergus Falls Heritage Preservation Commission and Friends of the Kirkbride. It is free and open to the public.
Part of the meeting will be devoted to the importance of saving and restoring historic buildings in general, and what others have done to restore and reuse historic structures. There will also be some discussion of the Fergus Falls Kirkbride building‘s historic significance. Among the scheduled speakers is Ray Minervini, the man who breathed new life into the Kirkbride building in Traverse City, Michigan.
Also worth noting is that the city of Fergus Falls has proposed a phased demolition of the former RTC property. Under the plan some newer additions to the main building, as well as some older separate structures, and the tunnels beneath the Kirkbride could be demolished as early as Summer 2012. The areas in question are marked in bright yellow in the image above. The city has also proposed breaking the property into smaller pieces so that developers interested in reusing only a portion of the Kirkbride (a single wing for example) may make proposals to do so. According to an article in the Fergus Falls Journal, “Parts of the Kirkbride that were not picked up by developers could tentatively then be torn down late in the 2012 construction season and into 2013.” Read the article here: City Gives Kirkbride One Last Chance.
I don’t understand why the city is in such a rush to demolish the kirkbride. At least from the exterior photos this kirk looks to be in pristine shape. Who actually owns it now? Has the state totally terminated operations there and moved out?
They’re in a rush to demolish it because the state dumped it on the city quite a few years back and keep dangling the carrot of federal funds to be used for demolition…and if the funds aren’t used, they’ll be lost (supposedly-this is the fifth time its come up). The buildings are still structurally sound, but decaying at an accelerated rate, since they are sitting unused, unheated and empty. That and there really isn’t a viable re-use for such a large building in a town like Fergus Falls. It is definitely not a “destination” for much of anything. There have been several failed crackpot schemes to develop the property, but nothing to fruition.