Okay, welcome to our 2026 Bloomington Restorations Incorporated annual meeting celebrating our 50th
anniversary. Yay!
So we do want to recognize preservation partners who are here. If I don't name your name, feel free
to stand up and shout your name at me anyway. We have Noah Sandweiss from the City of Bloomington Hand
Department. Noah. People from the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission. Who here is from the
Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission? Okay, we got some members out here. Very good.
and the Monroe County Historic Preservation Board of Review. Any of my fellow Monroe County Historic
Preservation Board of Review people? Very good. Get those reaccreditation points there. And anybody
else working with us in historic preservation, feel free to wave now or forever hold your piece. Okay.
We would like for the BRI Board of Directors to please stand to be recognized.
Thank you, thank you. What we're going to do is we are going to move into the election of board members.
So the nominees are James Capshaw, Karen Duffy, Pete Kenney, and me, Devin Blankenship. I just need
a motion to approve that slate and a second. So can I get a motion?
Okay, so moved. Can we get a second? Okay, and seconded. So all in favor say aye. Any opposed?
Any abstentions? Okay. So you do it fast, so that's how it goes. Okay, and then we're going to move
into the election of officers. So the nominees are for president, me, Devin Blankenship, for vice president,
Pete Kenney, for treasurer, Elizabeth Cox-Ash, and for secretary, Jan Sorby.
Can I get a motion? Okay. Can I get a second? Okay. And all in favor say aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?
Okay. What we're going to do next is we're going to transition into the BRI Historic Preservation Awards.
So our executive director, Steve Wyatt, will come up here for that section. Let's welcome Steve.
Again, we call these the bricks. And tonight, I'm going to start off with an Outstanding Preservation
Project. OK, tonight I'm going to start out with the Outstanding Preservation Project Award. The Princess
Theater, it was getting to be in not so good shape. There was reports of pieces falling from the parapet.
The city got involved, and luckily for the community, a new owner came forward at the same time and
tackled the project. His name's Neil Panzer. He's not here tonight. He's out of town. But he really
deserves praise. And we have a brick form when he gets back for what he's done for this theater.
It's probably what the only terracotta facade in downtown. So it's very unusual for Bloomington. It's,
it's definitely worth preserving. We have a BRI preservation Eastman on it too, from the early eighties
when it was renovated back then. Okay. The next one we have is also outstanding preservation project
award. And this one
It's going to Dave Harstad and Chris Minow for the restoration of the Harbison Farmhouse on Woodyard
Road. Here's a picture from 2014 when the state did their historic survey. So you can tell it's a beautiful
brick eye house, but it needs a lot of work. And it had been this way for quite a while. And there we
go. It's cleaned up now, but still ready to start.
And fortunately, the old windows, you might have noticed in those pictures that the old windows weren't
there. But they're stored inside the house. And here's the after. Would you come forward for the award,
please? Dave and Chris? It's beautiful.
Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. I won't speak long, but first, this process... I'm sorry, can
you hear me all right? All right. So a lot of thank yous to people in this room. All we did was write
checks and get in people's way. And so we apologize now for all the...
harm that we caused people, but bottom line is Sam Solar was our architect, unbelievable job helping
us through all the design challenges. Chris Stirbaum and Golden Hands were amazing on all aspects of
the process. Chris was great to work with and Ben is not here, but we try to break things around the
house every now and then just so Ben can come over and help us because he's just
an unbelievable person. Duncan, we've got an old, not shown here, is we've got a barn that's possibly
even older, and Duncan gave us a lot of really great advice. As everyone knows in this room, Duncan
is a real barn expert, and we're blessed to have him here in Bloomington. So not only were we able to
preserve the old house, but thanks to Chris and Duncan and others,
we preserved the barn. And then I apologize if I'm missing anyone else, but someone who's not here that
I want to thank, Jose and Raul Chavez. I'm sorry to get worked up, but I don't want to be too political,
but preservation and construction does not happen without immigrant labor. We had so many wonderful
laborers on that project who were from Mexico,
And it would not have happened without them. So please join me thanking them as well Our next award
is for the Rosemary Miller preservation activism award and this year is a pretty easy selection with
what's been happening in the cottage Grove neighborhood and
This house here was purchased by a developer who planned to tear it down and build more of the things
we've been seeing all over 10th Street and other places near the campus. But John and Amy Butler weren't
having it. They lived next door and they stepped in and worked on it. I know we talked to the owner
of the house
about possibly moving it, but the better solution is what they came up with was to keep it where it
is, where it belongs. They actually bought the house to save it and got it through historic designations
for local protection too. And they extended that work with creating a district for the entire neighborhood
to save it from the encroaching development of these multifamily buildings that
in keeping with that historic district there and that's coming as a recommended for approval by the
Preservation Commission and coming towards the City Council next. So I'd like you to come forward and
give you a brick. Thank you so much for all you've done.
Thank you very much for this award. We are honored to even be considered, let alone to win it. It's
been a long road. We never thought that we could accomplish the things we accomplished. And really,
there are a lot of heroes in this story. And I want to thank the members of the Historic Preservation
Commission for believing in our project and for backing it.
And that was heroic. I truly believe that. And I'd also like to thank James Ford for being with us every
step of the way, and everyone else in the Cottage Grove neighborhood for believing in this project,
and also for stepping up for preservation. So thank you all very much. We have one more award tonight.
And this one's closer to home. It's for volunteerism at the Hinklegarten Farmstead, our headquarters.
I'd like to ask Leanne Luce, our Farmstead volunteer coordinator, to come forward to present this award.
Leanne? She's acting in her other capacity as a volunteer.
Where are you? Would you come up? Thank you. Did you know this? Did Elizabeth keep this quiet? Yeah.
Good job. Good job. You want to come up to you? OK. Well, Elizabeth helps me very much with the volunteer
and the open days. But this is about Paul.
So I want to read this. He gets the award. He is a wealth of help and knowledge. He is a silent, calming
presence at the farmstead open days. He is knowledgeable and shares information with visitors and volunteers
about the farmstead, gardening, local history, and the longstanding preservation efforts of BRI. He
and Elizabeth are a faithful team I can count on.
He also entertains visitors and serves as the bouncer on open days. And I have also accused
him of maintaining a liar's bench when it's nice outside. He's a book lover and very generous in passing
them on to others, and I've been a lucky recipient. I truly appreciate you and the longstanding association
with BRI and the farmstead. So congratulations. OK?
Just a little hint. Could always use volunteer, so talk to me. Thank you. Talk to me or Paul or Elizabeth.
Thanks, Paul. Here. This is for you to keep so you've got proof. Don't you laugh. OK, let's see.
I'd like to give a brief update on some of our projects, starting off with Back to the Farmstead.
Let's see. This is the carriage house. Last year, we showed how we had it tuned up carpentry-wise, had
it stabilized and re-supported with improved foundation and all the wood tuned up. And so now we've
got it painted so the project is finished.
And this coming year, we're moving on to the dairy barn, which is the largest barn. And you can tell
it needs some work. We're going to rebuild doors and repair the carpentry and then paint it. So that's
the project for this summer on the farmstead. We also continue to work to find solutions for houses
that we've acquired that were endangered with destruction.
We picked up another one this past year. This one's on West 6th Street. So we're looking at, if we don't
find someone to buy it and restore it, we're also going through the process of specifying work to look
and see about the feasibility of having it as an affordable housing project. So we've got a couple paths
there. And it could work, I think, for affordable housing. We don't know yet until we get estimates
from contractors.
And with that, I'll also mention like I did last year about we find that there's more demand than ever
for BRI because of all the development happening with student apartments. It's a matter of the houses
are going down pretty rapidly. And I mean, compared to the way they used to be, things have been rezoned
and the path for
demolition is smoother now for these kind of projects. So we continue to work with developers to try
to find solutions. If it can't be designated historic, then possibly move the house if there's time,
or at least salvage out architectural materials that could be used for other houses and other projects.
So that continues to be something we are spending time doing.
So if anybody is handy and wants to help out with pulling doors and hardware and other architectural
items out of houses, we can use some more volunteers. So just let me know. And with that, I'm going
to turn it back over to Devin for our presentation tonight for the anniversary. Thank you very much.
Just so you know, this is my drink of choice, a Monroe on the rocks. It's not secretly vodka or anything.
Okay, well thank you to everyone for being here this evening. I do have a quick question, and I'm not
singling anyone out. Who has been in Bloomington longer than 50 years? I've been here 50 years. Look how 50.
Longer than 50 years. Okay, so anybody come to Wilmington in 1976? So that was the year BRI was founded.
Okay, who has been here for 45 years? Okay, and then 40, 35, 30, 25, 20,
15, 10, five, anybody less than five? Okay, well thank you everyone for being here this evening. I promise
I won't take 50 years in the presentation, so. I do have to work tomorrow, so. So this is 50 years of
BRI. I'll be nice to our cast people too by coming back to the microphone here.
So what we're going to look at this evening is the 1970s, progress versus preservation, our restoration
loans program, our affordable housing program, options to buy, and the Hinkle Garden farmstead itself.
And then at the end, we will have time for questions, comments, memories, anything you want to share.
So this is very much what Bloomington looked like in the 1970s with car culture. This is East 3rd Street,
if you recognize the McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, the historic, no longer with us, Kentucky
Fried Chicken. Many of the businesses from the core of downtown had moved out to the east side for the
big expansion of the mall area and everything else there. When you think of stores like Blocks,
and pennies, and some of those had moved from downtown, including things like Bloomington Hardware,
had moved out to the east side. So that was very much still the trend in the 70s. And if you can name
those cars, more power to you, but you can tell it's the 70s. One of the main things that happened was
the destruction of the Morton Hunter Mansion. And this was 11th and Walnut.
And it was really kind of considered the start of the historic preservation movement in Bloomington
and Monroe County. There was a huge outcry after it happened. Thankfully, those columns in the front
were saved and have been repurposed on another house. But it was sort of the beginning of historic
preservation. A lot of times previously, historic preservation had been about, did President George
Washington live here? OK. Did Abraham Lincoln sleep here? Only once.
Okay. So a lot of that until we got to that bicentennial point, it was we weren't focused on normal
people. We were focused on presidents or other other famous people. So here's the Morton Hunter mansion.
And it was demolished, demolished back in the 70s. Like I said, that's when people began organizing
to save old buildings. And Bloomington restorations was created in 1976 as a result of
those movements going on. So some of you may remember those of you who've been here longer than 10 years,
probably remember High Point, you know, the strip mall that everybody needed to go to all the time for
everything. That's where the mansion used to be. So those of you who've been here since before the mid
90s, probably remember the showers factory looking something like this.
In order to save the showers factory. It took a lot of A lot of effort from the community to get behind
the notion of historic preservation as being worthwhile This is one of those cases where you look at
things like the embodied energy of what did it take to build? Build the buildings that are there. What
role do they have? Obviously, we're never going to have the world's largest furniture factory again.
So what could we use a building like this for?
And those of you who live in Bloomington today know exactly what we use it for. One of the early examples
was the Cochrane House. You can barely recognize it behind that storefront there on North Roger Street.
The newly formed BRI group learned the house would be demolished, and then sounded an alarm in the newspaper.
Bill and Gail Cook purchased it, and it was their first Cook preservation project.
They used it as the office for their product liability and insurance company. And if you don't recognize
it yet, that's what you will recognize it as. So that is the Cochrane House. So our fledgling organization,
after its first couple years, had had enough fundraising and drives
to finally purchase its own property. So the first property that we purchased was a property down by
Lake Monroe, or Monroe Lake, if you're really technical, Mount Ebel Church. How many of you have seen
Mount Ebel Church? Yeah, most people in here. So there's a nice group of preservationists there together
in the pews.
Another area that was starting to gain attention was the old library Because you know, it's not the
early 1970s. You've just built the most beautiful brutalist structure in downtown Bloomington And you
don't need that dank old Carnegie library 1910s they didn't know what the big drafty windows and those
squeaky hardwood floors and Yeah, so
So there was a big effort to save the old library. And so BRI was involved in the advocacy of getting
support for saving the old library. How many of you have been in this building within the last year?
Yeah, a lot of people. So you know it today as the Monroe County History Center. It's one of our treasured
Carnegie libraries. There's the old view from Washington Street before the addition went on.
So I was told I must brandish these awards, otherwise the people come up here and do them for me. So
one of the awards that BRI received was in 1979 from the once called Historic Landmarks Foundation of
Indiana, now known as Indiana Landmarks. And we have Rosemary Miller and Gail Cook accepting the award
on behalf of BRI.
Williamson you said okay very good oh yeah okay Sandy sir boss thank you it's called the service award
so this is why we have to get together it's to share this knowledge oh here's another we should probably
tear that one down um yeah it's another drafty house with lots of intricate woodwork and
you know, North Walnut, maybe luxury apartments. So this is the Morgan House. It was BRI's second project.
I believe the Morgan House had one of the first in-ground pools in Bloomington, very small in-ground
pool out the back. So it was in pretty rough shape.
As a person with a very far back memory, I can say I've never seen it look like this. I've only seen
it the way that it looks today. According to Steve, the word on the street is you could stand in the
basement and look up and see the sky. So it was not long for this world when BRI purchased it. That's
another thing. When you hear people with the rhetoric of reasons to tear down houses, it's always the
same, like five or six things. It's drafty. They're worried about the foundation.
You know haunted whatever so So this is the Morgan house before And this is the Morgan house as you
know it today at 10th and walnut Yeah, sure
Yeah. What was the, do we know the sequence of when Guy Loftman moved in or? So he bought it directly
from BRI. Okay. So, um, oh, here's another drafty old structure. Uh, you know, those 1907 courthouses,
uh, you could build something modern instead of that, but, uh, there was a discussion in the early eighties
to tear down the courthouse.
I believe to build a parking garage downtown because we needed more parking and And so then there was
a ground 12 support to save the courthouse So the courthouse is our 1907 bow arts. It's our third courthouse.
We've been through some courthouses people We don't we don't really need to crank through many more
courthouses. I think you know Having this one is very good
Now I know it can't hold all of our stuff, but it can do some things. So we're fortunate to have Rosemary
Miller have an opportunity to go up on top of the courthouse. So we have some pictures from that experience.
Notice the dinginess of the dome there, not brightly illuminated as you've seen it before. Even here
at BRI, we've heard accounts from people like
Gail Cook saying that the murals were totally covered up, and you couldn't recognize them, and they
had filled in the rotunda with a courtroom. And so it really wasn't showing the best side of itself.
Look at the dome there. You've got one of the scrolled features in copper. You can see the Graham Hotel
in the background there on that middle picture. And then the courthouse fish, which is said to be six
feet long. Believe that if you want.
It's true. Rosemary took these pictures as she scaled the ladder. That's not a fish pun, I promise.
And this was her view from atop the courthouse. The dome was since replaced. It was around 2007, 2008,
with that renovation project that we resurfaced the dome. And there's probably a few pieces of the copper
hanging out in some closets around town. And you'll notice the Grand Plaza was a later cook project
as well. Okay, I'm going to welcome up Duncan Campbell to talk about the Paris Dunning House. So please
welcome Duncan up here. Yeah, so this is
about 1983. And Rosemary and her continued efforts to save just about everything that was barely standing
managed to get this away from the Craig family really just in time. And I was a carpenter in those days
with partnering with Michael Yocum.
We were called to this site by Dee McIntyre, who at the time worked for what was not the, it was, well
it's Han now, what was the old name for it, Redevelopment Office. And Dee was a folklore PhD student,
friend of Henry Glasses and Warren Roberts and the stalwarts at the, at IU at the Folklore Department.
I don't know how well it's understood now how close a relationship the growing BRI had with the city
of Bloomington, but the redevelopment department and BRI worked hand in hand on several projects, the
Morgan House and so on. And of course, our affordable housing program much later has done the same in
terms of getting HUD grid funds to help us. But that really started with DMACC entire
And he was a very concerned preservationist. And the first person I met who sat me down and said, let
me tell you about the Secretary of Interior's standards. And he had seen some of the work that we had
done. And he liked the work we'd done. And he came to me and he said that they had acquired this building
and that he was going to be the manager of the project.
for BRI slash city. And in those days, he didn't really differentiate that much between his paid job
and his volunteer job. It's where he used his influence in both directions, which I'm not sure how easy
that would be to do anymore today. But there was not really a conflict of interest. There was an affinity
of purpose. So Michael and I go over to this house.
We were remodelers, but we hadn't ever really done any historic preservation work, and I certainly wouldn't.
At that time, I've called myself a preservationist. And we took a look at this, and we were like,
oh my gosh. But Rosemary came with us, and I didn't really know her at that time, but I've never met
that kind of enthusiasm about, well, anything.
And I said, so what's going to make the difference about doing this? She said, oh, we're doing it. We're
doing it. We're doing it. And I'm just like, OK. So we sat down. It took us a week or so. And we put
a bid together. And they didn't want to do time and material or anything. They wanted price. So we were
frightened.
I wasn't ever sure if you did the job too high or not. But the way that you met with Rosemary in those
days was you went to lunch somewhere. And I've been in BRI for a long, long time, not quite 50 years,
but pretty close. And I've been to lots of lunches with Rosemary and other parties. And I'm sure many
of you have also. But they were somewhat formal affairs. And so she had put together a committee
watch over this project, and we all went to lunch, and she said, so how much do you think, what can
you do this for? This was just for the shell, just the outside. But you can see both the back porch,
this is the back, both the back porches are gone. On the left side, there's a build out that was some
kind of bathroom. The brick has been plastered over, a lot of it, and or painted.
And there you can see the side. And this one wing on this side was in such bad shape, we had to tear
the thing completely to the ground. I mean, dismantle all the bricks, stack them and clean them, and
then hire some masons to put it back together. By the way, that's our crew at the ripe age of 33 or 34.
Rosemary was on hand all the time to take pictures, so. Sorry? Which one's me? Yeah, on the left. You
can't tell that? And then Michael Yocum on the right, and that's Drew Antilla. As we're working as our
assistant. He was only 17, yeah. Anyway.
So this is the other side of it. And the roof was terrible, everything was terrible, but it was pretty
much all original. And so the way that work got done was we had these weekly committee meetings. Oh,
let me finish my story about the money. So I said, well, it's gonna be $88,000 to do the shell. Remember,
this is 1983.
I don't know if that was a good price or not. I had no idea. And she just sat there and shook her head
and said, well, it can't be that much. And I was actually, I'm proud of myself. I said, well, that's
what it's going to cost. Because I didn't know if she was trying to just get me to lower the price or
whether she just, yeah, I didn't know. And I said, well, that's what it's going to cost. So you're not
going to be able to do it.
or at least we're not going to do it. And she said, well, we have $77,000. And there was kind of silence
and the whole committee was there. And I said, and Michael and I were there. I said, well, you know,
you're $10,000 short. And I mean, it's funny, it is funny, but at the time, it wasn't. Because we really
wanted to work. I mean, this is two years of work.
But I was pretty sure that she was waiting for us to say, oh, 77, OK, we'll do it for that. But I didn't.
I said, no, you can't do it for that. And she said, well, we're going to do it anyway. And I didn't
know what that meant. I said, well, you're not going to do it with us.
because that's not enough money. And she said, well, will you do it until we run out of money?
And I said, yeah. And she said, OK. OK, we'll get the money. And I mean, at the time, I thought, well,
at least we'll get 77, and they won't be done. And they'll have to. I don't know what they're going
to do, but I'm not. So we, I'll just shorten this a little. We worked for a year and a half,
and we got to 77,000.
And we're having this weekly meeting. And each of us, I'll talk about that in a minute, but each of
us made a report. And when it came around to us, we were the lead on the job, I said, when you pay us
the next payroll, that will be the end of this. That will be the $77,000. So we're done. And if you
get more money or you have more money, we'll come back.
This was like a Wednesday afternoon. We always had them on Wednesday at lunch. And Rosemary, she didn't
even blink. She said, okay, you don't have to worry. You show up on Monday. We'll get the money. This
is the second time she said this to us. And I said, okay. And we showed up on Monday. And I said, so,
how'd you do? And she said, well, we walked the whole neighborhood
over the weekend with our committee, and we raised $15,000. I mean, cash. And we said, OK, we went back
to work. And it cost $88,000, I mean, to the dime. So, and she was, you know, obviously I was flabbergasted
that she could do that, that they could do that.
I don't know, I didn't know that. She didn't give tips. But my point about all this is really is that
that's the way BRI has always functioned. And Rosemary was always like, we're going to do this and we'll
get the money. And people say, Rosemary, we don't have any money. And she'd say, don't worry about the
money. And if you want to do preservation, don't worry about money. I mean, I've been doing it now a
long time.
And she's still writing. And I've done a lot of projects that didn't have the money until the project
really got rolling. And then, inevitably, it did. So anyway, we had these wonderful meetings. And we
had this committee. This is Rick Lofman in the foreground. That's Guy Lofman's father. He's no longer
with us. But he was on the committee. And Jean, the woman in the yellow skirt, whose name I can't remember
for a long time. Who is that?
Sorry? Yeah, Jean Anderson, who was local. The woman next to her was not on the committee, but she did
show up a lot, and I don't remember her name. Richard Jenkins is the one with the notebook in the plaid
shirt, who's still a painter. He had the paint contract, and he's still painting in Birmingham. Larry
Dahl is sitting down behind him. He was the mason. He did all the foundation work, including
on the back of the house, dismantling almost the entire porch foundation and rebuilding it by hand.
And he also was responsible for repairing it everywhere else. All the porch foundations had to be completely
rebuilt. And he worked by himself most of the time. And Rick, I won't remember his last name in the
blue jeans, was the electrical contractor.
And Dean McIntyre in the green jacket, whose face you can't see, was the lead. And he worked with the
DHPA to make sure Secretary of Standards were being followed. And he would come to all the meetings.
And if we ever had questions, he would just explain to us what the preservation protocols were. And
we never doubted it, because that's just the way you had to do the work. That was the scope. And if
we didn't really know how to do it, we'd look at the Secretary of Standards and argue over the details.
The reality was for the two of us, for Michael and for me, we started in the middle of the winter. There
was no heat in the house. We took all the windows out. We stripped them all by hand. We took all the
glass out and cleaned it and put it all back in by hand. It was about 10 degrees in that house most
of that winter. It was really cold. And we didn't have any heat. And we didn't have a budget for heat.
As you know, we're already $15,000 short.
we decided to start a fire in one of the fireplaces. Because we thought, well, we got in these fireplaces,
you know? So we were pretty smart. We took some paper, and we put it in there and lit it. And about
half the smoke came right back out into the room. And the rest of it was drifting across the second
floor. It never did get out the chimney. So that didn't work. So we got a propane heater, and we would
run it for five minutes, and then it would
The room would fill with carbon monoxide. Fortunately, we had the windows out a lot of the time. Anyway,
we were supposed to do all the windows and doors, and then all the rest of it was exterior, which was
essentially the carpentry was rebuilding all the trim, rebuilding all the porches, doing all the woodwork,
and then we trained a group of IU folklore students, predominately folklore students, to do the tuck pointing.
And basically, we had these college students who had never done it. And Larry Dahl and I and Michael
basically showed them, taught them how to do it, how to mix mortar and stuff like that. And they did
all the tuck pointing. I mean, 100% of the house. And as you can see in this picture, the porches are
significantly built. And then, of course, we have the famous picture of Rosemary, who had sold it
to the law firm, which ended up buying it and putting it on the national register. And we bid to do
the interior of it, but we didn't get the job. The law firm hired somebody who probably only did it
for $77,000. I don't really know what happened to it. But for me, I mean, it's an important job for
the city, for the town, because I don't think that Prospect Hill would have been preserved and turned
into a historic district if that house hadn't been done. It is absolutely the anchor.
of that neighborhood. And if there's ever an example of where one project can affect hundreds of projects
and hundreds of citizens, that's it. When I first started, I was in Rogers Building Supplies. How many
people remember when we had lumberyards? And I was at the contractor's desk, and somebody I knew, another
contractor, came up and he said, I saw your cars over
in front of that old house on Third Street. And I said, yeah, we're gonna restore that house. And he
stepped back and he said some words I won't repeat. And then he said, that should be a gas station.
And I mean, he was, you know, he thought we were, well, he thought we were crazy and I wasn't sure that
we weren't. But anyway, it's really been an important thing for BRI. Put BRI on the map as did
some of the other projects that you've mentioned. And I think that's all for me. So thank you.
Thank you. So there's a good before and after. The before is of the back. The good thing with symmetrical
houses is you get the impression either side. And that's Rosemary receiving the deed for the house.
OK, next we're going to have another speaker, Chris Sturbaum, come up to talk about restoration loans
and his family's work with restoration loans. Everybody welcome Chris up here. Can you hear me OK? I'm
going to talk about a little bit of politics. 1966, Penn Station.
demolished. You know, the whole country was shocked. And the National Preservation Act was passed in
1966. And at that time, there were 12,000 properties that the state, I mean, the federal parks department
had said were important properties to save. By 1966, half of them were gone.
So I think what some people don't understand is the climate of the time when BRI came into being. I
won't say it was war, but it felt like war and things were just being torn down. You know, that courthouse,
my dad, I grew up two blocks from here and I was 10 when we moved here. So I've watched
The whole preservation movement of Bloomington happened because my father was involved in it, and I
was at the same dinner table. So I heard what was going on, how it was happening. So until the Preservation
Act happened, there was no law. There was no rule. There was nothing to protect older property. And
the revolutionary thing about that act was that now law says,
What a community feels about a historic property matters just as much as the profit that that guy's
going to make by tearing it down. And that was real. And Rosemary knew that was real. And she knew Reed
Williamson, who also, in 1966, formed the Indiana Landmarks. And when she needed money to go get money,
she drove up and saw Reed.
And they were loaning the city, they were loaning BRI money at that time to create something like a
revolving fund. So she knew the rules and she, I remember we were, interestingly preservation
of neighborhoods was happening at the same time that preservation of property was happening. And it's
like BRI was the older sister for the historic commission as well, which came in
maybe 13 years after BRI was founded. And this law came to life in Bloomington. Duncan helped write
the local ordinance. But it was 13 years from 66 till BRI came along, 10 years really. But until the
Historic Commission came along, that we had real rules here. Before that, you could put it on the National
Register, which Duncan got very good at doing,
And then once BRI touched it, they put covenants on the deed. And those were real, too, and that protected
property. So I remember our neighborhood association meeting with Rosemary, and she said, what you need
to do is get this on the National Register because the city is planning a road that goes right through
Prospect Hill neighborhood that'll take out 40 houses. And once you put it on the National Register,
The National Preservation Act says the city has to review that as it applies to a historic property.
So it was a classic chess move to block. And Rosemary knew exactly what to do. She told us what to do.
We were just like, we don't know what to do. Rosemary knew exactly what to do. So there are a bunch
of times when I was in the room with Rosemary deciding things.
I'm a little off script, but let me see if I have a couple other stories. Oh yeah, well, this is more
recent. When BRI needed money for the deal to buy their property, BRI, let's see, by those headquarters,
she just went and got the money. And when she, we had to do the downtown,
They're just a list of properties where Rosemary found the money. So, BRI really came in at the right
time and put out the fire. And the story of the courthouse is, you know, my dad just happened to be
on the council at that time, the county council, filling in an interim position. One vote is what saved
the courthouse. I think it was a four to three.
And they were serious that that was going down. And they had stupid plans. But that's the kind of war.
Everything was on the table. Everything could be demolished. So meanwhile, back at what I'm supposed
to talk about. But you really had to know what the time was when BRI came in and played that important
role. Let's see if I know how to do this.
Okay, this house back here, when we moved into the neighborhood, there was a cut out of the hillside.
There was a trailer, old rusty trailer sitting in the hillside. It was a single room occupancy. Someone
died of an overdose in that basement. And that's the neighborhood that my dad bought into. He wanted a house.
He was a teacher with five kids. They wouldn't show him anything on the west side. The west side was
horrible. The west side was where you did not want to go. They wanted to take him around and show him
all the suburbs. But he grew up in a house that his dad had fixed. And he recognized the value of a
house on the west side that had enough rooms for all the kids. So what BRI's project turned into was
a revolving fund, because
Once dad bought a house, then the old lady next door to him told him, buy this house, and she loaned
him money. And then after that, the banks wouldn't loan money to get these other houses. So BRI would
loan the money, put their covenants on the house. The house would get restored. And then here's what
tricky thing my dad did. He sold it to people that wanted to live in the houses. He didn't own them
as rentals. He didn't maintain them. And by the time he passed,
We celebrated his passing in my mom's house, which we had worked on, and Nextdoor had worked on. And
the people that came to see him were the people that got the houses. It was really touching. But that's
how we built a neighborhood around ourselves, by getting these houses. And BRI financed almost all of
them. And Dee McIntyre helped me learn how to do houses, too. He was a master. Just, he knew how to do it.
Oh, I don't know if it was a dozen. But at one point, we made a little key thing for him that had a
monopoly board on it. Little hooks and reeds. But what he didn't do was keep them, pass them on, get
the money back, revolving fund works. That's how it revolved. So Rosemary helped us save it. And then
we held on that way until the Historic Preservation Commission was formed.
like 13 years after BRI started working. And then there was the work to designate the neighborhood.
But everyone was kind of working together. The mayors at those times were working with the neighborhoods.
BRI was working with the neighborhoods. And there was a real conscious way of bringing life back to
these old houses. So I'll show you a couple things if this will advance. Dude. OK.
That's how it looked when we were starting to fix it. But there used to be a little bathroom outside
of that pink, orange area, because there were no zoning rules either. So we've remodeled a bunch of
things that have crazy bathrooms in the basement, crazy bathrooms on the side. Anyway. That's Third
and Rogers. Let's see.
Oh, I know what this one is. Oh, no, this isn't. This is right across the street from Fairview School
on 7th Street. And on the left is what it looked like when we found it. And what's behind that restored
sign was an Airstream trailer that was built into the house. And someone probably would have restored
that if they could have found it. But it was crazy.
And what was really weird and nice, all the Victorian details were in the basement. Someone knew better
when they took them down then to throw them out. And they all were there, and we put them back.
Let's see, I guess before and after is the classic. So here we go. Let's see. Rosemary told Cindy, don't
worry about the money. No backward loan.
That's why the revolving fund mattered so much. I don't know if it's called redlining, but they didn't
want to loan any money on the west side because these houses were decaying. People were buying them
as rentals and not maintaining them. So we saw it as a neighborhood. We want ownership. We want people
that buy into the neighborhood. It matters to our neighborhood. And that was the little mini war that
was going on in the neighborhoods. Let's save our neighborhoods, get people in them,
And BRI's money made that happen because the banks could care less. Okay, let's see. Oh yeah, so there's
that beautiful little porch. You can't see all the details, but it was a great house hiding inside of
a 50 years of weird treatment. Okay, Harrodsburg, we had a lot of good dreams about this house. But
something happened.
And we had a roofing company that used to release people from jail. And one of them didn't think about
smoking on top of a 150-year-old lath with no plaster, dropped a cigarette in there. And by the time
we found it, we realized why Harrodsburg had lost so many houses over the years. There's a fire department
can't get there. We turned on the hose. It went pshh.
The hose went from next door and it shot about 10 feet ahead and went, psst. And in about 15 minutes,
I said, get the tools out of the house. And it burned to the ground. It was insured, which is good.
Oh, yeah, this is on, what is this? Is this West 7th too? West 7th. Right.
It was a lodge. More people know the details about that than I do. VRI money went through that. Oh,
I think I'm out of my time. They said they'd get a hook if they needed it. Thank you, Chris. Thank you.
We didn't have to get a black cane or anything. Chris and Duncan and I could probably do a revolving
show for quite a while. So one thing that we're really proud of is that BRI nominated the Maple Grove
Rural Historic District to the National Register. So what you see in the protection of Maple Grove Road
comes from a BRI effort. It was the first listed rural historic district in Indiana. And I will just
say from the
Rural perspective as someone who works on the county historic preservation board Oftentimes our districts
in the county are single properties. So having something like the Maple Grove Road rural historic district
on the National Register Is one of our biggest recognized districts in the county because otherwise
it's house by house generally speaking
We do have our wall expert in the room Susan Snyder Salmon who's done a lot of effort on not only documenting
the walls but getting deep into the history of walls so check out her presentation from the history
club and anything upcoming about about walls from Susan. Affordable housing so affordable housing continues
to be a major topic.
here in Bloomington and Monroe County. And thankfully, BRI has been part of the affordable
housing conversation for several years, and a lot of it has involved restoring the old houses like we
talked about on Prospect Hill, but also looking at some infill as well. So the first affordable housing
project was completed in 1998. That was just like, what, five years ago, right? 1998, almost 30 years ago.
There are 29 houses that were restored or built So yes, BRI will build new houses. So you see some new
houses there in Steinsville We also had a new house built on 15th Street And that's one of those interesting
areas when you talk about neighborhood density where we've been able to take multiple lots
like in Steinsville we were able to get three lots from purchasing one house or in on 15th Street we got
Two lots and we moved one house. I believe we moved that one bungalow to the one lot and then we built
the other bungalow. So that's one of the ways that we've been able to increase that neighborhood density
and having infill that matches the neighborhood.
A lot of the grants come from the city or state. So anything you can do to support that kind of money
coming in helps us with affordable housing. We need to rehab the houses up to code with new roof,
new wiring, plumbing, kitchen, bath. So as Chris mentioned before, a lot of times we'll have weird bathrooms.
I have a side porch bathroom myself. But especially in our rural communities that didn't have plumbing
Early on, and this is for low to moderate income household so our affordability covenants are usually
on there for about 10 years that if they go to resell the house that needs to be sold under the same
affordability criteria as well.
And it's also is the same neighborhood revitalization focus. So we know if we can get affordable houses
into existing neighborhoods, that's really what we wanna be doing. So we still look at the core neighborhoods
in town and see are there areas where we could do, where we could move a house, where we could have
sensible infill or support efforts going on in those neighborhoods. And like was mentioned earlier,
usually when one project happens, other projects start to happen. So the Paris Dunning House was a major project,
But even if you restore a gabled L on 7th Street, then the neighbors think, you know what? They're painting
the house. I bet I could take off this metal siding and paint my house too. So you'll kind of see a
ripple effect from BRI projects. So I'm going to show you a few examples of affordable housing. You'll
recognize a lot of these from around Bloomington.
I can tell you where some of them are, and if I can't tell you, Steve can probably tell you. This one's
out, yeah, South Rogers. That's West Kirkwood. This one was for sale like three years ago. There is
one on South Rogers that is painted green. Is that also one of ours on South Rogers? Yeah. That's Howe
right there. South Lincoln.
See, we could have made it a trivia game. That's a sixth, yep. That one's Ellisville, right? Yep, Oak
and Walnut. Yeah, if you know where Oak and Walnut is in Bloomington, congratulations, because it's
in Ellisville. A nice double pin house there. This one is on
was 7th. That's not affordable housing. It's in the wrong slide. It's a loan project. This was the doctor's
office in Steinsville. And so that was an Ellisville one. You're thinking the Ellisville? Yeah. These
rural doctor's offices, we were just
Got him out the wazoo. But yeah, so this is the doctor's, everybody's got a doctor's office in their
backyard, you know. No, but this one is the doctor's office in Steinsville. And this was a BRI project.
And so it made a great small house. And so that's one of those things that we've done pretty well is
having a variety of different sized houses that we work on. This one is Steinsville.
You can sometimes just tell by the scale of the hill. You're like, eh, that looks like it.
And then here, here's the interior of that one. So you can see a lot of the finishes are taken back
to the time period with transoms and wood trim there. And it's great to have those houses livable again.
This is that example from Steinsville. I do want to point out, in the picture we have our friend and
realtor, Deb Tamaro and Don Grandbois.
And Don was the head of the Affordable Housing Committee for many, many years and took on projects himself,
which I will point out to you. And then there's the new houses that we built in Steinsville as well.
This one is a gabled L where the chimney had collapsed into the kitchen. Again, a lot of times people
say, well, you gotta tear that house down. But don't tell us that.
So we've also had to move a lot of houses to save them. So sometimes you'll see pictures like this.
The bungalows are the easier ones to move, not like the university court's two-story brick houses. So
a lot of times our efforts to save houses involve moving them and putting our covenants on them as well.
Oh, here's the gabledell. Somehow the slide got out of order. That's the one where the chimney collapsed,
right? Yeah.
Got out of order. I didn't drop my slide deck on the way in or anything. It's just PowerPoint. This
one's an interesting project. If you just saw this house by itself, it looks like a very typical suburban
Bloomington limestone house. This house was actually over on East Gate over by 10th and the bypass.
And the developer was able to work with us in moving the house
to West 8th Street. And so this was part of our affordable housing program. I think we just had to take
four feet off the house on the front. Yeah, to make it fit the lot. Yeah, to make it fit the lot. So
we're flexible people. Right, so. OK. Yeah.
Yeah, the developer paid for the move, which we like when they're willing to do that. So yeah, where
you see the East Bay apartments that are three-story tall apartments just south of the railroad tracks,
there were several ranch houses there. And so this is one of them. So it made a great affordable housing
project that we were able to plug into the neighborhood on the west side. And again, it used to have
a basement in its old location, so we adjusted it to be a single-story house.
Another thing we do is just the notion of buying time and getting those options and the options to purchase
and purchase for resale So this is where we buy and hold properties and we just wait and wait for somebody
and we advertise but we also wait for somebody who's the right person to to work on the project and
to meet our criteria so we'll purchase a property and then we will select a qualified buyer and
And sometimes that can fall through a couple times before we get get somebody that sticks we provide
the consulting for restoration were there to help and then we apply for we apply our bri covenants to
that property. So, for example, we have the Steinsville church.
This was, Don Grand Boys did this project on East 45. So it was a Tudor revival cottage and the county
had condemned it. But when you see that front door, you're like, well, they can't condemn it forever.
And so Don, wonderful Don, put his blood, sweat, tears, heart, soul,
Probably more than $77,000 into this Tudor house, which is over on East 45, as you head out of town.
Here's another one. He asks, we've got a fan favorite. Call in to request your favorite VRI house.
Dial 0102 if you like the house on North Walnut Street that moved to South Henderson. So this one was
by our very own Jan Sorby and John Lawrence to move this house to South Henderson where there was an open lot.
And so that was a big labor of love for them to move that. That's where the Hallmark Properties office
is on North Walnut. This one is another neighborhood anchor, a lot like the Paris Dunning House is.
You might recognize this from Seventh and Rogers. Yeah. Oh, Fullerton House. This is Fullerton. What
happened then? Something got inverted. These got inverted somehow then.
We have this Victorian on Fountain Drive, formerly Vernal Pike. The house was formerly on Vernal Pike
and moved. Fountain Drive was formerly Vernal Pike. We have to be really clear about these things, sometimes
with our house moving. We'll say, but what about the house on North Walnut? Oh, you mean the South Anderson
house? No, I mean the, you know. It's a real who's on first when you start moving houses around. And this was,
One of our great ones on the Beaumont house this one we held on to for quite a while we had some interested
buyers we had some disinterested non buyers. This this house just so happens to be built in a low enough
area that the basement was an indoor pool most seasons of the year.
And so that was something we knew we had to have done was fill in that basement. It is surrounded by
the Porter Reserve. So that's one where we worked with Sycamore Land Trust when they got the land for
Porter Reserve. And so this is the house property. This is as far west on 48 as you can go while still
being in Monroe County. You are almost to almost to Whitehall.
And across the way is where the Hoosier football team got their holy water. So this is neighboring a
sacred site. And we held onto this one for quite a while. And then we had the Cardwells purchase it.
And they did a lovely job. But you see in the before picture, look at the beautiful light streaming
into that lovely room there. So it just inspires you. But a lot of work went into that house. And it
is currently a bed and breakfast. So if you have friends from out of town staying or you just want to
have a little staycation,
Definitely check it out. This was another big win for us, the Hayes Market and Sanders. So we had an
opportunity with the family selling it. And we already had an interested buyer before we had even closed
on our end of the deal to have an interested buyer. And so they did a lovely job. Kay and Rudy Fields
did a lovely job of restoring the Hayes Market and Sanders and even restoring the gas pumps. So we were
very appreciative of that.
I don't know if there's a family relation between hazes or if every haze feels compelled to go into
the grocery industry. I don't know. Yeah. I believe this one was also a teacher at the school in Sanders,
this haze. Yeah. OK. And then another one that we held onto that neighbors occasionally complained about
was the Gable to Elle on Smith Avenue. Glenda and Patrick Murray.
were our fabulous buyers who converted this gabled L back into looking like a gabled L. It was a bit
of a tricky one because it kind of initially felt like it was facing a weird direction. So getting it
to feel right on that lot was important. And creating that housing in a dense, core neighborhood was
important as well. You'll notice they did a little shamrock for their vent up there. The Murrays, there's
a shamrock.
So the other one that I have to brandish is the award that we received in 2010, the Servos Award from
Indiana Landmarks for community preservation group lifetime achievement. When you receive a lifetime
achievement award before you're 50, that's pretty good. So we got it like 16 years early.
There's our lovely, lovely group there. You'll recognize some faces, I'm sure. And then our Hinkle Garden
Farmstead. So if you're familiar with the Hinkle Garden Farmstead on East 10th Street, that
is our headquarters and has been our headquarters for the past 20 years. One of the cool things about
it is it still functions as a farm in our partnership with others.
We also have the museum on site, which is open multiple times a year. Check out our museum open days.
And then we also have a rental property there as well that's the little house next to the bigger farmhouse.
We recently finished painting the exterior. Those are the colors from the 1920s. But there's been farming
on the land to the
East of the house there at 10th and Pete Ellis and also that's where we have our maple syrup production
as well. So that's been our home for 20 years. That's a kind of nice in the city glimpse of a farm.
And that is all I have for you this evening. Thank you very much for being here and for listening. But
we'll also entertain questions or comments or memories that people want to share with us. So thank you
very much. Yes, you over there, you have a question. I do not know.
Okay, the Rose rosemary asked the owner of the Paris stunning house to just donate the house to us
There were a lot of cats in that house, too. And not like jazz musicians, like, yeah, feral cats, yeah.
Yeah. A lot of cats used to hang out in that house. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say maybe she didn't
even take the owner out to lunch at all, you know. It's just a... Okay. Yeah. Lunch was cheaper back then.
Okay, other questions, yeah. How many directors of VRI have there been? So how many directors of VRI
have there been? Well, Steve is the only one I've known and heard of. Steve, did anybody predate you?
There was nobody who predated you. It was all volunteers before. And I'm sure there's times where Steve
feels like he's volunteering a lot too, so we appreciate all he does, yeah. Nancy Easton had the idea
that VRI needed someone to run the show. It was all volunteering without Liz Mary. I don't know what
would have happened.
And one of the things from Duncan section talking about the Paris Dunning House that I didn't get in
the transition there is the Paris Dunning House was kind of the beginning of the end of BRI board members
saying like, yeah, let's all roll up our sleeves and manage a construction project directly. And so
that's when it transitioned into the revolving loan.
process and then also eventually to getting an executive director because if you can imagine a ragtag
group of historic preservationists trying to all manage a construction project, you can see why the
Paris Dunning House might have been the end of that notion as an efficient notion. Yes.
We used to talk about the saving of the courthouse. I, at one point, got involved with that. And one
of the interesting things about it, at least at that time, was as far as I know, it was the first ERI
project that really pulled in the entire community. There was kind of a celebration down the town. There
were bands playing, students, music.
came into play, we had games for kids, and one of the people involved, not a part of DRI directly, but
definitely pushing it, was Charlotte Zilko. And really, she could be recognized. She would seem big.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure, yeah.
Charlotte Zitlow and Gail Cook are two people we've lost recently who were strong forces in historic
preservation and community as well. Yes, Elizabeth. I was a banker for 30 years, and when I first started
with BRI, I ended up financing just about all of its affordable housing projects because the other banks
would not finance those because they had historic coverage.
So I was doing it until it was OK for those other banks to do it. By then, I'd lost my job. I'd been
there for 30 years. So now other banks will finance them. But this took a long time to convince the
banking community that those covenants were OK to finance.
and actually increase the value of the property to have those covenants on it. This was just extremely
important. Yeah. Well, thank you for being an early believer and an early advocate and continuing in
your many roles and supporting BRI and all the things that you do, because we definitely appreciate
all that. Jane. Yeah, a couple of things to follow up on that. First, is it true, since we're talking
about the courthouse,
I think I saw an article in the paper that the city council wanted to replace it with like a three-story
parking garage. Is that true? I had always heard parking garage. I don't know if anybody else has any
other version of the story that they've heard or anything they remember as well. Yes, Elizabeth, do
you remember? Maybe there were offices in the park below. Offices in the park below, yeah. I saw a headline
that said, this monstrosity must
It's always interesting to see the tear down rhetoric. And that's the other important thing too with
looking at adaptive reuse. When you're looking at things like the Showers Brothers factory, when you're
looking at things like the space where we are today, when you look at all these spaces around town that
maybe have outlived their original function, that's when we look at adaptive reuse. And so even looking
at something like
the courthouse. Obviously, the courthouse cannot serve all of our functions that we need for Monroe
County government. We've just grown big enough that not everything can be in that building. Some towns
do the thing where they add on hideous, hideous additions to their courthouse. Or like Terre Haute,
they tear down their whole town square and then put little other buildings around the courthouse that
are related to the county government. But
That's one of those things to always consider when you when you see a building like that, that you're
not sure about if it can be useful again. Usually it can be useful, you know, whether it's a Coca Cola
bottling plant or like I said, a furniture factory or an industrial building of some kind. Other. Yep.
I have Jefferson Street. And I'm just curious, how did that happen?
There's always there's always a very delicate dance between the
preservation and development and what agreements can happen and what scale of agreements can happen,
whether it is one of those things like saving one of the houses, moving a house, saving all the houses
in place, things like that. Yeah, Chris. Yeah, I'm sure you all know that the climate has changed and
that people are even seeing preservation as an obstacle to density.
Yeah, Wendy, I think what happened was the city rezoned that section of the neighborhood for that kind
of development. So then when the developer tried to build it,
There is nothing to stop them, except historic preservation in the Green Anchors neighborhood. But that
wasn't successful, the effort to designate that historic as a neighborhood. Does the Planning Commission
have as much or not more power than the City Council? No, they work together. The City Council sets
the plan. The City Council sets the plan. The Planning Commission administers it.
But anyway, we tried to find a way to get some of those houses saved by moving, and we had someone in
the neighborhood that wanted to move one or more of them, and then he changed his mind. And at that
point, it was too late. Yeah, sometimes the time is not on our side to save certain things that we would
like to save. The other thing I'd once heard, and I'm not sure this is probably less true now that there
are more apartments downtown,
But at one point in time, the density, the residential density of downtown Bloomington was less than
it had been since before World War II because of all the parking lots and specifically a lot of I.U.
parking lots. So a lot of times when you travel around downtown, kind of take note of the parking lots
that would have been, you know, 12 or 16 houses around around town. So yes. Yeah, Paul.
And sometimes adaptive reuse is not necessarily historic, and it's not always pretty. 714 South Rogers
and Bloomington Commonwealth Center is bruneless architecture. I wanted it torn down until the idea
came. Well, why don't we make that police headquarters? And I'm sure that not everyone was happy about
that in my neighborhood.
I think it's a brilliant reuse of an old structure. Not everyone was happy with what happened with the
McGraw Baptist Church. It's now a Hoosier Heights climbing facility. But 100 years from now, somebody
can tear down that big ugly building, the steel building that was added to the rope room, and something
else can be done. But I wouldn't be around to see that.
Yeah, that's another thing to consider too is we all have our pet favorites with historic preservation.
Word on the street is that Herman Wells didn't like Victorian houses too much or didn't really care
about them that much. A lot of times you're not a huge fan of the houses that were the ones that maybe
your parents or grandparents lived in as newer houses. So bearing in mind with the National Register
standards of 50 years, that means anything built in 1976 or before,
and then picture some of the houses built in 1976 and how you may or may not feel about them. And realize
that that house from 1970 is also, yeah, it's also antique. It's also showing a time period in US history.
So, okay, any final thoughts? Yes, Jan. I do have a final thought. And I'm wondering, how is people
right here
obviously care about historic preservation. What can they do, like if they see a building that's laid
out, what can they do to help us? Yeah. So we often compare ourselves to an animal shelter for houses.
This is the first time tonight we've made that analogy. But if you see a stray house, and it's giving
you that look,
And if you think it might have fleas, probably has fleas. It's looking a little bit raggedy. That's
one of those where you can always contact us at BRI. You can email Steve. We do keep our eyes out for
endangered historic properties. And a lot of times then there's a connection to other people in our
world. So for example, we purchased a house in Ellisville very much because it had cats in it. That's
how somebody knew about it. They're like, I know about the cats in that house.
And also, your eyes should consider purchasing that house. So we do ask that you keep your eyes and
ears open. A lot of times, the issue for us is time and or money. So either securing enough money or
having the time to address to something is the big thing. But we do like when you report those things
to us, because we don't live everywhere. We live in our own neighborhood. So there's times that, and
I would say that a lot of times about the house on 48,
that not very many of us drove by the House on 48, so we didn't really know how the House on 48 was
doing. But it's always good to get reports from our membership and from the general public about any
structures of concern. Yeah. With her comment about green acres, in a few weeks there will be a vote
of the city council to decide whether the conservation district or the cottage neighborhood will go
forward. It would be really nice to have everyone in this room show up. Please.
Very good. Some cottage grove, cottage grove advocacy there. So the other thing too, it's our, it's
our 50th year. We love to hear from you. We love to hear your ideas. We are doing the pandemic bounce
back that every organization is doing. So we love to have you involved. We like to hear from you, whether
you're volunteering for open days,
Whether you have an idea for a project we could do Whether you see a need that we can help fulfill We
would definitely love to get that sort of insight from you as well So with that Steve, do you have any
other announcements that you'd like to make before? Okay, so yes, so please eat cake eat pizza celebrate.
Yes. We've got another announcement from Olivia. Oh
Yeah, and there's adaptive reuse. If you don't use your name tag, we'll use it for somebody else. So
adaptive reuse. So please, please have some pizza, have some cake, mingle, continue to mingle. Thank
you so much for being here. Thank you for helping us with this 50th year of VRI. We appreciate you being here.