THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
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DANVILLE — After six months of efforts, progress is finally being seen toward a intergovernmental agreement between Danville and Vermilion County regarding the demolition of downtown’s Bresee Tower and the former county courthouse annex.
The city finally had a meeting assistant state’s attorneys representing the county a couple weeks ago, Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said, and there’s an updated intergovernmental agreement awaiting his review. That agreement is supposedly the only thing standing in the way of the demolition projects.
Today, a joint meeting will be held concerning the agreement between the city, county and Farnsworth Group, which has worked with the city to put together the request for qualifications for the demolition project.
Farnsworth Group “will be helping us with things like criteria on how we choose the best bid. Because although the city has a lot of experience with this and we feel good about it, bids generally, there were some concerns from the county, how are we going to choose the bids? What if one bid says the county’s portion is way higher, and the city’s is lower? And what if one bid says the city’s is higher and the county’s is lower? Do we just take the lowest overall bid?” Williams said. “So, they’re going to help provide us some guidance on how we fairly choose who is the successful bid applicant.”
One overall bid will be sought, with Williams noting that if there were two, it would cost the taxpayers more money.
Likewise, the city and county want to deal with only one contractor.
A majority of the proposed agreement deals with establishing areas of responsibility for the demolition. For instance, if there are project delays, Williams said, who makes a decision if something comes up? Is it the city, county officials or county board?
“So, it will be bid as one project; probably in phases,” Williams said.
Another concern is, if there’s a shared wall they didn’t know about, should the city or county pay for it?
“I think we’re finally at a place where, my hope is that I’ll be able to bring a resolution to public works (committee) next month, and to city council the following week,” he said.
From there, the county also would have to pass the agreement.
They could receive demolition bids for 45-90 days.
One day would be set for when interested demolition contractors would be invited to go through the properties and do their assessment.
“This is going to be a little bit different. Normally when we do a bid, we say we want you to do exactly this. But this, it’s so involved. We don’t know every facet. So, they are going to come in and tell us, this is what we will do to demolish these buildings for you,” Williams said.
“So, my hope is that we’ll finally have some movement next month,” Williams said.
Sometime this fall, asbestos remediation could start, but could take awhile, Wiliams guesses.
“You might not actually see parts of Bresee Tower coming down yet this year,” Williams said. “It might be the beginning of next year.”
The Danville City Council set aside $4 million three years ago to tear down Bresee Tower and a handful of other buildings in the downtown area that are unsafe and need to be demolished.
Williams said he hopes the Bresee demolition will cost the city $3 million or less and they’ll have $1 million left to tackle the other buildings.
Pieces of Bresee Tower have continued to fall, causing the closure of one lane of adjacent Main Street. Williams has said too much time has passed to save the building.
The lot to be left over after the buildings are demolished will be green space until an appropriate developer is found, Williams said.
Bresee Tower, the tallest building in Danville, was designed by noted Chicago architecture firm Mundie and Jensen and was built in 1917 as the First National Bank.
The classical revival-style tower has been vacant since the owners forced business tenants out and closed the building in 2005. Potential development proposals through the years never materialized.
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