Efforts from the city helped to protect the Cal Johnson building at 301 State St., which has been on Knoxville's "fragile fifteen list" several times. However, the owner of the building feels the city overstepped its boundaries.
"We are disappointed in the process and how it went down," Jed Dance, President of Bacon and Co. said.
Dance was referring to Mayor Madeline Rogero applying for H-1 protection for the building which City Council approved earlier this month. H-1 makes it harder to demolish historic buildings and allows the city to regulate construction and repair.
“At some point the community really needs to rest assured that some buildings with a tremendous history such as this one are protected in perpetuity,” Deputy Mayor Bill Lyons said. “This is a building that we were concerned about possibly losing so we wanted to make sure it was protected from demolition.”
The building is important to the city because Cal Johnson, a former slave who became one of Knoxville's most distinguished African American businessmen, built it back in 1898. According to Dance, there was no need for H-1 protection because he and his company have no plans to demolish the building. In fact, since the late 90's, the company has refused two proposals to demolish the building.
“We need it for the future expansion of our business. We’ve been downtown forever and wanna stay downtown and our business is growing,” Dance said. “We can’t afford to sell it because 3, 4 or 5 years we may need it for the expansion of our business. So we will fix it up and lease it in the meantime.”
Keeping the building open and in use in the meantime is one issue both sides can agree on.
“Next would be hopefully the owners choosing to go ahead and develop the building, get a tenant, open it up," said Deputy Mayor Lyons. "There’s no better way to preserve a building than to put it in use.”
Fortunately for both parties, that is exactly what Dance and his company plan to do.
