The Tin Shop building in downtown Batavia is officially coming down, after the Batavia City Council this week approved a contract for it to be demolished.
Now, the area where the Tin Shop currently stands is set to become a downtown plaza that will include things like a public restroom facility and seating, according to past reporting.
The fate of the Tin Shop building, a property owned by the city at 106 N. River St., has been some time in the making.
In the years since the failed One Washington Place project, Batavia has been marketing the building and other city-owned properties. The city said it at one point received a proposal for the land and had been negotiating the property’s sale and development, but it never entered into a formal contract and terminated negotiations in 2023.
In January, the City Council voted for a certificate of appropriateness that paved the way for the Tin Shop building to either be relocated or demolished in the future. Because the structure, built in 1890, is within the city’s historic district, a certificate of appropriateness is required for any exterior work on the building, including relocation and demolition.
At that meeting in January, Batavia Community and Economic Development Director Scott Buening explained that part of the reason the city needed to get this process underway when they did was because the TIF funds the city intended to use to pay for the public restroom facility planned for the site are expiring at the end of the year.
The suggestion to either relocate the building or demolish had been recommended by the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, with the caveat that some of the materials from the building be salvaged, according to Buening. He said the city was looking to reuse the building, but it was going to cost close to $1 million to renovate and rehabilitate it, so the city dropped the idea.
When the building was discussed in January, Ald. Kevin Malone said he didn’t support approving the certificate of appropriateness because he wanted to see the building’s damage first, and wanted the city to have a “more robust plan” for how materials will be salvaged and what to do with them once the structure is torn down.
Ald. Alan Wolff, on the other hand, advocated for deciding on the building’s fate sooner rather than later with the hopes of saving parts of it.
“If it is salvageable, or there are parts of it that are salvageable … the sooner we get that done, the more chance there is for that to happen,” Wolff said. “If we don’t pass this now and we wait another year, we’re not going to be talking about tearing it down, it’s going to start tearing itself down. Because the damage that I’ve seen in there is pretty bad for some of it.”
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Longtime Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke said there’s “maybe some history” with the Tin Shop building, but that it didn’t have a significant historical impact on Batavia.
“It’s just kind of a bland story,” Schielke said, “and I can testify to having been in there from a little kid on. … It’s something that needs to go, in my opinion. It is beyond its life.”
Ald. Tim Lanci also advocated for demolition.
“I love historical buildings,” Lanci said at the meeting in January. “I’m in the ‘tear it down’ camp on this one. … If the mayor doesn’t know the history and there’s nothing there behind it there, then in my mind … there’s probably not a ton of significance there.”
Ultimately, the certificate of appropriateness was approved in a split vote.
The City Council returned to the discussion of the Tin Shop’s fate at its meeting Monday. Over the course of its discussions, the city had said it was its preference that the building be reused elsewhere, either by moving the building as a whole or dismantling it and rebuilding it, according to documents from the city. But the city said it would propose demolition if it couldn’t find anyone to relocate it.
That’s the situation the city now finds itself in. Ald. Abby Beck said at Monday’s meeting that the city had marketed it for sale to move it or save pieces of it, but the request generated no interest. She reiterated that the building is “in disrepair and beyond current (city) finances to find any (rehabilitation) fix for it.”
As a result, the city is moving forward with demolition. The matter discussed on Monday was a contract with Fowler Enterprises for $33,450 to tear down the building. The city has previously contracted Fowler Enterprises for a demolition at a property at 916 Park St., per city documents.
The bid notes that the cost and pricing is valid for 90 days from when it was proposed.
As part of the bid, the city is asking that the “sign” on the north side of the building be preserved, and that some of the wood from the building be reclaimed as long as it does not substantially interfere with the demolition process.
The approval for Fowler Enterprises to demolish the building was OK’d by the council on Monday.