Portions of the old Selmers building in downtown Aberdeen will be incorporated in new design renderings and included among the design concepts that will be considered for the proposed Gateway Center, Mayor Erik Larson announced during a community meeting Thursday night.
That doesn’t mean aspects of the old building definitely will be incorporated into the new one, but it includes the concept among the design options.
Recent plans for the Gateway Center — which would act as a visitors and tourism center, a centralized place for the county’s various enterprise and economic development organizations, and provide some retail businesses and meeting space — called for the old building to be torn down. Some public meetings have already been held to solicit input on the design and after one such meeting last month there was renewed interest from historic preservation advocates in preserving the brick building’s facades. Saving two facades could cost $852,582, officials said Thursday night, significantly less than an earlier estimate of from $1 million to $2 million. Full demolition is estimated at $306,000.
“Soft costs aren’t included,” said Matthew Coates, president and principal architect of Coates Design Architects, the project’s architectural design contractor. Those expenses not directly related to construction, such as permitting and engineering fees, could bring it closer to $1 million, he stressed.
Coates also explained the early 2016 estimate was for the entire structure, not just its facades. Using the old building either fully or partially was among initial ideas for Gateway Center but that earlier projection made even incorporating the facades less financially viable than it appears now.
“It’s quite spectacular,” Mayor Larson commented when explaining why it’s worth reconsidering incorporating portions of the old building into a new one. “It’s really not that much added to the cost.”
Quite a few people at Thursday’s meeting made it clear they wanted at least a portion of the old building included into the 20,000-square-foot center planned for the northeast corner of Wishkah and F streets.
Earlier meetings and opinion gathering resulted in four design concepts, three of which relied heavily on wood as part of the design and were inspired by aspects of the wood products industry and its past. One design was inspired by local historic structures.
A design inspired by aspects of a lumberyard and the one incorporating local historic structures garnered more favorable votes than the other two. But the historic structure design — which resembles the Selmers building — also received a large number of negative votes, Coates explained.
“Community participation is key to success,” he told the audience.
Many of the 60 or so people who came hadn’t attended the November and December meetings when the building design surveys were conducted. Those surveys were posted online and received a healthy number of responses, Coates also noted.
An online petition seeking inclusion of the Selmers building in construction of the center has received more than 300 signatures and was the impetus for scheduling another community meeting.
“Help me understand the real significance to restoring the facades and adding (them) to a new building, versus building a new building,” Aberdeen City Council member Peter Schave asked. “It just seems as if we’re doing it the hard way.”
Doug Orr, art director of Aberdeen Arts Center and one of the creators of the online petition is in favor of at least partial reuse over full demolition, was the first to reply.
“It sets a precedent by showing that the city cares about itself,” he explained.
A local design artist created a concept of a new building that incorporated the facades of Selmers as part of the petition effort.
Mayor Larson and Coates also said using the facades as part of a new building is better than reproducing the style of the old building.
“It’s not Disneyland,” Coates remarked.
A few people want to see the old Selmers fully preserved and used to house the center. They were told that was unlikely to occur.
Aberdeen architect Bob Ford pointed out that any new construction would have to be built higher than the old Selmers structure, specifically two feet above the flood plain. He suggested using portions of the Selmers building as a low wall in front of a new structure sitting at the higher elevation. It would provide flood protection and add to the project’s aesthetic appeal by putting landscaping between the wall and the new building, he said.
Full reuse of the existing building also isn’t practical because it’s old, made of unreinforced masonry and would require a substantial amount of cost and effort to bring it up to modern building codes, said Norm Landry, a construction company owner who helped evaluate the building. Among substances that need to be removed, albeit carefully, are asbestos and mercury, Coates said.
Some people asked why the city’s Historic Preservation Commission didn’t opt to take action to help with some sort of preservation efforts for Selmers. It was constructed in 1924 — the same year as the Morck Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Coates was among experts who stated that Selmers isn’t considered historically significant because it wasn’t built or designed distinctively. Age of a building isn’t the only aspect of a structure that helps determine whether it’s worth preserving, several people commented. The Morck was better constructed and has other characteristics that earned it that designation, Coates and others noted.
Some people in the audience said it didn’t matter whether the old Selmers was historically significant. It was “significant to the community,” one woman said.
The last scheduled Gateway Center design meeting will be on Jan. 19 and starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Rotary Log Pavilion. People will be able to weigh in with their thoughts about renderings that incorporate portions of the Selmers Building as well as the other design concepts shown last month.
“We’re taking a step back here,” Larson said. “Hopefully, on the 19th we’ll take two steps forward.”
