Updated: Frank Lloyd Wright building in Whitefish demolished
Source: Missoulian
Updated: Frank Lloyd Wright building in Whitefish demolished
PERRY BACKUS pbackus@missoulian.com Jan 11, 2018 Updated 7 hrs ago
WHITEFISH A Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building in Whitefish was demolished overnight after a last-minute flurry of fundraising to save it failed to raise $1.7 million by a Jan. 10 deadline.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Lockridge Medical Clinic Building was designed by the famous architect the year before his death in 1959.
The 5,000-square-foot building was purchased by Mick Ruis in 2016. He had put the property on the market last year for $1.7 million.
Ruis, the developer of Columbia Falls Cedar Creek Lodge and Convention Center, tore down the building to build a three-story commercial development that will include retail space, professional offices and housing units.
Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/updated-frank-lloyd-wright-building-in-whitefish-demolished/article_3e4ad30d-73fe-586e-a66a-8c839fe4a34d.html
Demolition Underway on Whitefishs Wright Building
http://flatheadbeacon.com/2018/01/10/demolition-underway-whitefishs-wright-building/
Last-minute negotiations fail despite offers by historic preservation group
By Tristan Scott // Jan 10, 2018
Despite eleventh-hour negotiations, efforts to save the historic Frank Lloyd Wright building in downtown Whitefish reached an impasse Wednesday as demolition got underway shortly after 5 p.m., with crews readying excavators to raze the structure on Central Avenue.
Crew leaders said completing the demolition work would likely take days, but the fate of the building was final after negotiations between preservation groups and the propertys owner, developer Mick Ruis, caved hours earlier.
The efforts to save the building included an attempt Wednesday to negotiate a $1.7 million purchase by the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, but Ruis ultimately rejected the finer points of the deal and made a counteroffer that was untenable, according to the group.
The board of directors of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy agreed the owners proposals provided no realistic path to acquiring the building, short of an investor willing to put down $1.7 million cash without reasonable time to complete their own due diligence on the property, Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Conservancy, said. We certainly attempted to make that happen alongside many other options we explored in the incredibly brief window of time we were given to find a new solution We in the preservation community are all incredibly disappointed by this outcome, to say the least.
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https://twitter.com/FlatheadBeacon
We in the preservation community are all incredibly disappointed by this outcome http://flatheadbeacon.com/2018/01/10/demolition-underway-whitefishs-wright-building/ Developer begins demolition of historic Frank Lloyd Wright building hours after last ditch effort to save it falls through
Link to tweet
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Frank Lloyd Wright was the inspiration for the character Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead." The book begins, "Howard Roark laughed."
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Apparently he got a $1.7 million offer by his impossible deadline and he nuked it anyway. Even if it was dilapidated it was a community asset that stood for earlier aspirations. Apparently it had amenities that were bold their day including a fireplace in the waiting room and indoor-outdoor planter:
Now Wright's innovations are old hat, and the building might have looked dated, but his name is still golden and if the developer had a brain he'd have found a way to incorporate some element of the original structure into his 3-story instant eyesore so as to preserve the connection and increase his ROI. But no.
