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Historic…Or Nostalgic?

Historic…Or Nostalgic?

One begins to believe it’s envy or jealousy that brings out all the opposition to construction on whatever project happens to come along for which approval by various municipal bodies is required. So Park7’s second request for permission to build apartments on the city’s east side is defeated, picked apart by six city counselors who trot out specious prejudices, some of them personal, to justify their opposition to a seemingly meritorious use of otherwise vacant land.

According full respect to planning, zoning and building code regulations now in force, how about giving developers and their fiduciary agents a freer hand to make investments in this community? There are too many boards and commission, some would argue, typically meeting in the evening when what nags some participants at home may be transferred to actions designed to annoy the community at large. For example, a recent suggestion to step up the regulatory power of the Historic Preservation Commission represents a power-flexing exercise that would be better worked off in the weight room.

Reason did prevail recently for the brick building Ned Gordon built in mid-1927 that has most recently housed Shakespeare’s Pizza. No crocodile tears of preservation were shed for Gordon’s little shack of a restaurant called Mutt’s Hut after it caught fire in the early morning hours of Feb. 21, 1927, after cook Charles Vaughn tossed gasoline on the stove for some reason. The fire spread to a rooming house next door filled with University of Missouri students; everyone miraculously escaped serious injury, but what replaced Mutt’s little hut would have to be fireproof.

The sky over Columbia is not falling, but a small, overactive group that’s brushed up on Henny Penny from their days in nursery school wants to defeat the developers and investors who wish to do business here. Housing for students has become the latest bête noire for the Chicken Little crowd. They’re legitimately questioning the future of higher education both in purpose and enrollment trends, many while generously suckling at the breast of the growth-driven institution that employs them — MU — and conveniently forgetting that these apartment buildings and the beds they house can always be repurposed or ultimately replaced.

Columbia has long been occupied by individuals who applied their ingenuity, curiosity and capital to develop something, be it an enterprise, idea or whatever. The Hetzler brothers come to mind, with an ironic twist when it comes to the preservation of buildings deemed “historic.” William and John Hetzler were butchers from Canton, Missouri, who came to Columbia in 1905 and built the ice plant and meat locker the following year at 320 E. Broadway. This was followed a few years later by the terra cotta-faced grocery and meat store they built at 706 E. Broadway. Both buildings still survive. They sold the ice plant on March 31, 1927, a few weeks after John Hetzler was elected mayor, mindful of the appearance of electric refrigeration that eventually obviated the need for the iceman.

The grocery store at 706 E. Broadway became the earliest Columbia foothold for the J.C. Penney Co.’s Store No. 757, which opened a few months later. One would not dare tear down that iconic building. Where are the zealots of local history and historic preservation when it comes to saving the Hetzler brothers’ ice plant? Ingloriously attached to a forgettable splotch of architectural wreckage at the corner CVS has been craving with lust, the sturdily built 1906 ice plant is an iconic structure of considerable historic significance.

Free-market libertarian capitalist tendencies have strongly swayed us to allow CVS to build its emporium at the southeast corner of this busy intersection across the street from archrival Walgreen’s. On second thought, though, maybe not. With talk of an eventual “gateway” structure proximate to this controversial intersection, maybe there is wisdom in not allowing CVS to headquarter there at what is already a very busy and somewhat challenging nexus of center-city Columbia. Those who favor preserving the old icehouse while extending Flat Branch Park northward to include the controversial corner may be thrown in the stocks for harboring such thoughts, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t at least be thinking about it. The Hetzler brothers’ ice plant building could easily be repurposed into something significant at the corner.

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