— Broward County thought it had a permanent home for its historical collections when it paid $3.75 million for a 39-year lease at the renovated West Side Grade School, but it has had to move out after only six years because of water intrusion and buckling floors in the historic structure.
County commissioners will decide Tuesday whether to sue the landlord of the 1923 Sailboat Bend school, now called the Historical Commission Building, which officials say is unusable in its current state.
The problems started a couple of years after the county occupied the building in 2009. It stopped staffing the building in 2014 and removed all furniture and remaining archives in September.
The renovation was part of a larger Lennar Homes development that included the 37-unit Artist Lofts subsidized housing project and the Village at Sailboat Bend condominiums. The lofts, directly north of the Historical Commission Building in the 300 block of Southwest 13th Avenue, appear to be part of the problem.
Construction of the lofts shifted water flow toward and underneath the historic building, engineering consultants told the county, making the site a shallow storm water retention area.
According to a county report, the needed repair work — estimated at $1 million — isn’t recommended until the surrounding site “has been regraded and the saturated ground around and beneath the building has been aired and dried.”
Of the $3.75 million from the county, $2 million was used to renovate the building and $1.75 million went to the Artist Lofts project. The landlord is an affiliate of Artspace Projects Inc., which owns the lofts.
The Historical Commission Building barely earned its name. The commission staff it was designed to accommodate was cut from the county’s budget in 2010, only a half-year after moving into the building. The County Commission eliminated the commission as of September 2014. The county now has a separate Historic Preservation Board, which does not use the building.
The historical library and archives that had been housed in the building are now available to the public at the county’s Main Library, on the fifth and sixth floors, said Stephen Grubb, the library’s marketing manager.
Grubb said the only space still being used at the Historical Commission Building is a meeting room, which is only available to the Sailboat Bend Civic Association, the Artist Lofts and the Village at Sailboat Bend condo associations.
Steve Glassman, president of the Broward Trust for Historic Preservation, is surprised the county hasn’t done more sooner.
“A lot of those deficiencies on the interior have been around for a long time,” Glassman said. “I think a lot of balls were dropped on this.”
lbarszewski@tribpub.com or 954-356-4556
