Via the City of Phoenix
(Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents Vestar.)
By Mark Carlisle | YourValley
A shopping center development in Laveen was planning to repurpose a century-old farmhouse on the site into a restaurant. That is, until the building was set on fire last year.
The developer changed plans to only preserve the farmhouse’s fireplace and chimney that were built in 1926, but the Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission would like to see feasibility reports to preserve more of what is left of the building.
The commission on Monday voted to not approve historic overlay zoning for the site, stipulating a request for the developer to continue to work with city staff on a way to preserve more of the building. Commissioner Daniel Klocke recommended taking apart the stones from the building’s masonry walls to incorporate into the center somehow.
The Laveen Towne Center, planned on 90 acres at the southwest corner of 59th Avenue and Dobbins Road, is being built on the former Hudson family farmstead, which stopped operations as a farm when it went bankrupt in 1985.
Vestar, the developer, had planned to preserve the farmhouse as a restaurant in the shopping center. Because the building was only partially built on slab, the rest on wood, preserving it would have mean lifting the building up about three feet and putting slab underneath it before setting it back down.
