Rockford seeks bids to demolish historic Elks Club. Is it too late to be saved?

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — The city is preparing to tear down a historic building in downtown after an unsuccessful yearslong legal battle to force the owner to make repairs.

The city is soliciting bids for the demolition of the 113-year-old former Elks Lodge No. 64, 210 W. Jefferson St. The bids are due to be opened Aug. 14, and the lowest responsible bidder would be presented to the City Council to consider whether to move forward with demolition.

The city says the building is unsafe due to years of neglect, and demolition is a necessary last resort after the owner couldn’t redevelop the property. Some advocates for historic preservation say the city should continue to explore ways to save the structure, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and in the West Downtown Rockford Historic District. The building was placed on Landmark Illinois’ list of the most endangered historic places in the state in 2022.

“The building can’t be replaced. It’s a one-of-a-kind thing,” said Gary Carlson, who lives in a more than century-old home designed by the same architect as the Elks Lodge. “That is a really significant and important building to the city. Hopefully every last thing can be done to see if there is somebody who could save it.”

The city has been in a legal back-and-forth with building owner Argyll Properties since filing suit on Dec. 11, 2018, to force repairs. Judge Donna Honzel previously ordered the owner to fix or raze the property by Jan. 3, 2022, and gave the city authorization to tear it down if the owner didn’t comply. However, the company has been granted several extensions. Then, earlier this year, the city was granted access to the property to inspect for asbestos and make preparations for demolition. The case is due back in court Aug. 28 for a status call on the demolition.

“Our concerns remain the public safety component of it. We have a building that has significant, significant deterioration,” City Administrator Todd Cagnoni said. “There’s holes and failures on the roof, with portions of the roof absent. That has been in that situation for such an extended time that the floors below those holes and failures are also collapsing.”

The city would place liens on the property in an attempt to recover the cost of demolition, which was estimated to cost around $500,000 back in 2021 when the case went to trial. The city could foreclose on the property and take ownership if those liens aren’t paid. Our attempts to reach the owner through their attorney on Tuesday were not successful.

“We’ve come to a point where we’ve exhausted the ability for the property owner to take action,” Cagnoni said.

The Elks Club was designed by Lawrence P. Buck and built in 1912, but the club vacated the property in the 1990s. It was previously donated to Goodwill Industries, which made some improvements and sold it to Argyll Properties in 2011 for $15,000, according to records from the Winnebago County Clerk & Recorder’s Office.

The Elks Club was given local landmark status in 2004 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Doc Slafkosky, co-founder of the J.R. Kortman Center for Design, which is in a historic downtown building designed by architect Jesse Barloga, said too often buildings have been allowed to fall into disrepair until demolition is seen as the only option.

“There’s a term for it in historic preservation circles: Demolition by neglect,” Slafkosky said. “You let it go and then you start using these phrases like, oh we can’t save it anymore. It’s just too far gone. You shouldn’t let a building get that far gone.

“To me it’s a responsibility of the owner, and to a certain extent a responsibility of the city to see that buildings are kept up properly.”

He hopes the city will exhaust every option to save the building. Renovating historic structures, he said, has given the city gems such as the Coronado Theatre, Prairie Street Brewing Co., and Embassy Suites by Hilton Rockford Riverfront, among others. Rebuilding rather than bulldozing also puts properties back on the tax rolls, which can help all property owners, he said.

Several of the buildings Slafkosky mentioned and others have utilized historic tax credits and other incentives to make difficult projects financially feasible for a developer.

“In Rockford, it has been one of the most powerful — at least downtown — economic revival tools that we have,” he said. “But we still look at old buildings like we look at potholes and taxes here, like they’re our enemy or something.”

Cagnoni said historic preservation has been a priority to the city, including its advocacy to preserve historic tax credits at the state level and using tax incentives to support historic rebuilds such as the Water Power Lofts, Embassy Suites, the Barber-Colman complex and pending projects including rebuilding the former Illinois National Guard Armory, Watch Factory and the city’s first Walgreens.

“We’ve been an advocate for removing blight from within our community and with a historic building the first priority is an adaptive reuse,” Cagnoni said. “In this particular set of circumstances we just don’t see a viable plan to advance it forward.”

It’s unclear what would happen to the property if demolished. In her court order in 2021, Honzel said the economic return for renovating the property was “speculative at best.”

“The only evidence offered is that the best economic use of the property is that it be demolished and its land be used as a parking lot, and that its current ‘as is’ value is up to approximately $180,000,” Honzel wrote at the time.

Slafkosky said he hopes if the structure comes down that it doesn’t become a parking lot. He said there is ample parking in the nearby parking deck and on surface lots next to Veterans Memorial Hall. He said it would be better for downtown if the land was used to enhance Veterans Memorial Hall, which was built in 1901 and dedicated in 1903 when President Theodore Roosevelt visited the city.

The Elks Lodge has had pitches for redevelopment before that never materialized. Roofing billionaire Ken Hendricks had an option to buy the building, with a plan to open a restaurant and banquet facility, before his death in 2007.

“Before they tear it down, if they could make one more effort to see if some of those developers who develop historic properties couldn’t save the building,” Carlson said. “The city has given the owners of the building lots of time. It’s just really sad that this has happened to that building.”

Slafkosky and Carlson said many buildings that were saved were once considered to be too far gone, until the right developer stepped in.

“People generally can’t see past neglect,” Carlson said. “They just see an ugly old building, and they can’t see that building could be something fantastic if someone would just stand-up and finally take care of it.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas