Tag: certificate of appropriateness

Johnson’s Creamery building, 60 feet of smokestack get historic protection from Bloomington city council

Councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith
From left: HAND director John Zody and assistant city attorney Daniel Dixon.
HPC advisory member Duncan Campbell.
The 100-foot mark and 70-foot mark are taken from the Arsee Engineer’s report. The 60-foot mark was extrapolated based on the 70-foot and 100-foot marks without adjusting for parallax.

The 140-foot Johnson’s Creamery smokestack will get demolished down to just 60 feet sometime in the next few weeks.

But it won’t get chopped down any shorter than that, because Bloomington’s city council has now enacted a historic district for the building, including its smokestack.

The Johnson’s Creamery is located on 7th Street just west of the B-Line Trail. The trail is temporarily closed where it runs past the smokestack out of a concern for public safety—because the smokestack is leaning and has been determined to be unsafe.

The council’s action came on a 9–0 vote at its regular meeting on Wednesday.

At its meeting last week. Bloomington’s historic preservation commission (HPC) went ahead and issued a certificate of appropriateness for the demolition of the smokestack down to 60 feet. The HPC’s action anticipated the council would establish a historic district for the building.

If the council had not enacted a historic district that included the smokestack, it could have been completely demolished. Continue reading “Johnson’s Creamery building, 60 feet of smokestack get historic protection from Bloomington city council” →

HPC says Johnson’s smokestack OK to be chopped to 60 feet, Bloomington city council next to weigh in

On Thursday, Bloomington’s historic preservation commission (HPC) voted to approve a certificate of appropriateness (COA) for the demolition of the Johnson’s Creamery smokestack down to 60 feet.

No conditions are attached to the COA. The commission weighed the idea of requiring the owner to propose a way to commemorate the history of the building through an artwork. But in the end that was not a part of the COA.

Thursday’s vote put back on the books the action taken by HPC last week, but which it rescinded at the same meeting, amid confusion about the substance of the vote.

The city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department has issued an order to the owner, Peerless Development, to demolish the smokestack down to 60 feet, based on a report recently completed by Arsee Engineers.

The engineering report concluded that the structure cannot be restored at its full height and still meet modern building codes. Any masonry smokestack would be susceptible to wind and seismic loads that would preclude restoration at that height, the report said.

Thursday’s action is meant to preserve as much of the 140-foot smokestack as possible. Continue reading “HPC says Johnson’s smokestack OK to be chopped to 60 feet, Bloomington city council next to weigh in” →

No decisions yet on Johnson’s Creamery smokestack

This photo is from the Arsee Engineers report showing the lean of the Johnson’s Creamery smokestack to the southeast.
Historic district commissioner Reynard Cross at the March 24, 2022 meeting of Bloomington’s historic district preservation commission.

[This article focuses on the procedural issues that have led to the current state of affairs. Namely, neither the Bloomington city council nor the historic preservation commission has taken action, yet.]

If things had unfolded differently on Wednesday, the Bloomington city council could have enacted a historic district for the Johnson’s Creamery building.

And on Thursday, the historic district commission (HPC) could have approved a certificate of appropriateness for the demolition of the former creamery’s smokestack down to 60 feet. The current smokestack, which was built in 1949, is now 140 feet tall.

Neither the city council nor the historic preservation commission took action this week. Continue reading “No decisions yet on Johnson’s Creamery smokestack” →