Never say Goodbye

New use sought for vacant downtown structure
By Lori Henson/Tribune-Star
Date: July 28, 2002

A flashlight tour of its upper floor reveals the Ohio Building, constructed in 1906 at 666-672 Ohio Street, was never ostentatiously beautiful.

Its beauty is simple and elegantly turn-of-the-century. It is hardwood floors, woodwork - all slick and dark-stained - French doors, light-flooded windows facing the Indiana Theatre and skylights surrounded by tulip light fixtures.

The building's beauty is timeless. But it is also dust-covered, scarred and neglected.

The former Tuller Hotel, a rooms-to-let establishment more than a tourist stop-over, closed about 1960, as near as anyone can remember. It has been untouched since, said Terre Haute attorney Kenneth Hayes, whose in-laws owned the famed Goodie Shop cafeteria on the building's ground floor.

The Goodie Shop opened there in 1950, owned by George and Edna Martin. George Martin died in 1986; Edna Martin died a year later.

The restaurant was renamed The Martin House in 1993 by the Hayes family. The Martin House closed its doors in 1998 and the building was put on the market. The Vigo County Republican Party, which used the former Trilogy Hair Designs salon as its temporary headquarters, was the last tenant during the 2000 presidential election. The building has been vacant since.

White letters in each of four front windows spelled "BUSH" until Todd Nation, vice president of Terre Haute Landmarks, removed them just last week.

The Ohio Building's owner, Terre Haute First National Bank, has not found a buyer in three years. The bank's appraisal of the building came in at about $160,000, said Steve Jones, a commercial lending officer at First.

Without a taker for the Ohio Building, the bank began in early summer to accept bids for its destruction. That's when Andrew Conner, president of Terre Haute Landmarks, began grant-writing for the building.

Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana gave Terre Haute Landmarks a $2,500 matching grant from its Preservation Grant Fund to conduct a feasibility study of the Ohio Building.

Terre Haute Landmarks now has hired preservation architect Tom Meredith, who soon will produce a study of the cost of saving the structure and some basic information about its measurements and structural viability.

After an initial walkthrough of the 26,000 square-foot building recently, Meredith said rehabilitating the Ohio won't be quite the chore he had expected.

"The biggest challenge is going to be getting a reuse for the building. The rest of it's just going to be the rehabilitation and it can be done. There's nothing to stop it," Meredith said. "It's in good enough condition to rehabilitate very easily. . . . I think, in general, it's structurally sound."

The pressure now, said Meredith and Nation, is to find a new use - and a new owner - for the building.

"We really need to find its next owner within the next 60 days," Nation said.

Terre Haute First's Jones said the bank has not put a firm deadline on Terre Haute Landmarks' finding an alternate use for the building. But Meredith said he is quickly putting together his study.

"We are under the gun as far as I've been told and that's what I've agreed to," he said.

He said Terre Haute Landmarks members Nation, downtown businessman Ben Orman, Conner and others have been helpful in gathering the scarce historical pictures of the former facade of the building and other background.

Local historian Mike McCormick and the Goodie Shop's Hayes said the building has housed an appliance store, a farm implement store, American German Trust bank and Swiss Cleaners, among other businesses.

The 40-room Tuller Hotel - and hence the entire second floor - closed shortly after the Martin family purchased the building for the Goodie Shop.

It is now storage space for some unwanted Goodie Shop-era Christmas decorations and other beaten-up boxes. Its former simple and functional elegance is dust-covered and smells of neglect and pigeon remnants. Nation said he and other volunteers would be cleaning up this weekend to show the building to potential buyers.

Among the incentives to a would-be owner are the grants available to restore and preserve the Ohio Building. In many cases, the grants can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Tommy Kleckner, incoming director of Indiana Historic Landmarks Foundation's western regional office in Terre Haute. Kleckner replaces Mark Dollase, who is taking a historic preservation job in Utah in August.

"There's a lot of money out there that new construction doesn't have," Kleckner said. "There are a lot of programs out there that a lot of people don't know about."

Terre Haute's second-story housing program, the facade grant program and the recent willingness of the Terre Haute City Council to grant a tax abatement to the historic Fuson Building are among local funds. Low Income Housing Tax Credits for apartments and the recently passed New Markets Tax Credit program also could benefit the Ohio Building, Kleckner said.

The size of the building should be attractive to a medium-sized business on the ground floor and housing upstairs, Kleckner said. And the renovation effort is not as daunting as other downtown preservation prospects.

"It's not a Terre Haute House; it's not the Tribune Building," he said. "Local residents and downtown merchants can see a building for what it could be instead of what it has become. This is integral to the historic fabric of downtown."

Nation agreed that the scope of the Ohio Building project would be more easily undertaken by a single business owner than other buildings.

"It's a good bet," Nation said. "It does make economic sense."

Among the necessary repairs are water damage in the first floor kitchen area, vandalism and missing fixtures on the top floor. Also, the second story would have to be brought up to current building codes, Conner said.

But the water damage and other deterioration that resulted from years of neglect have not done structural harm, said Meredith and Conner.

Cleaning up the building to show is Terre Haute Landmarks' next immediate priority, Conner said.

The mess, he said, "kind of gets in the way of people getting up there and dreaming."

Kleckner said dreaming about the Ohio Building's future will take an owner with imagination and a real commitment to historic preservation.

"You're not going to get a building of that quality back," Kleckner said. "It's just a very modest, beautiful historic building."

Conner said Terre Haute's history lovers have real momentum after consultant HyettPalma's downtown revitalization study presented this year to keep the city's history from disappearing. And Terre Haute Landmarks now has taken on the role as instigator of projects, rather than just advocacy.

"This is our first good project to sink our teeth into - to have a good save," he said. "It's good for the city. . .  We've lost a lot of our real gems. That makes it all the more important to preserve what we have."