Another building to the east of the Washington Pavilion might be headed for a historic renovation.
Grant and Chris Houwman, of H4J1 Development Co., recently bought the 300 S. Main Ave. building.
"We would like to fix the facade and bring it back to its original brick décor, but this is still in the planning stages," Grant Houwman said. The building, which has about 12,000 square feet, was once home to a Chevrolet car dealership. The structure dates back to the late 1920s, according to city records.
"It was one of the first (car) dealerships in the downtown," Grant Houwman said. "It is an exciting piece of history. We are interested in preserving the past."
Grant Houwman said the former Trager Chevrolet building also has an underground parking garage and a unique iron-designed ceiling.
The building now is home to some office tenants, including Site2 and Beckman Realty.
The acquisition of the 300 S. Main building now gives the Houwman group control of the entire east side of Main Avenue between 11th and 12th streets.
The Houwman group is wrapping up renovation of a three-story building that is directly across from the Washington Pavilion. The 16,000-square-foot building is being leased to two federal tenants, the Trustees department and the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services division, both of which are part of the U.S. court system.
H4J1 also owns a parking lot to the south of the 300 S. Main building and has tentative plans to eventually erect a multistory office building there.
Erica Beck, an urban planner with the city of Sioux Falls, said she is pleased the Houwmans want to restore the 300 S. Main building back to its original facade.
"It is really important that the private property owners make these kinds of investments,'' she said. "It is for the betterment of the entire community and for historic preservation. It is also important for the economic vitality of our downtown.''
Besides the 314 S. Main building, the Houwmans also have done historic renovation of the DeHoak building at the corner of 10th Street and Philips Avenue, Beck said. "It speaks to the quality of work they do in rehabbing the building to its historic appearance,'' she said.
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Historic house going south
8th, Minnesota Ave. home to be moved, restored in Missouri
A historic house on the fringe of downtown Sioux Falls is moving south.
A Missouri dentist will dismantle the three-story Van Eps house at the corner of Eighth Street and Minnesota Avenue and restore it on a farm north of Kansas City, Mo.
"I'd been looking for an old house for a while," said Dr. Kevin Allman of Kearney, Mo., who learned of the house through an Internet search.
The house needs to move to make way for downtown commercial development.
Sioux Falls businessmen Dale Jans and Lowell Hansen have plans to redevelop the property on which the house sits. The place most recently was used as transitional housing by Southeastern Behavioral Health.
A local moving company told developers last year that it could cost $50,000 to $60,000 to move it. Demolishing it would have cost upward of $20,000. The owners offered a $10,000 allowance as an incentive for someone to take the house away.
"We'd hoped it would stay local, but we had several people come look at it and then walk away because of the costs and work involved," said Craig Hagen of Hagen Real Estate in Sioux Falls, who represents the owners.
That $10,000 will be a "drop in the bucket," Allman said. He and his wife, Claire, plan to spend about $600,000 in moving costs and the total restoration of the house.
The house was built in 1912 by Inez Van Eps, the wife of early Sioux Falls businessman William Van Eps, who died in 1906. Located on the edge of downtown as commercial development threatened it, the building has housed an antiques store and a real estate firm.
Inez Van Eps was known for giving free piano lessons in the house to Sioux Falls children.
Historic items will be kept intact
The house, which sits atop a quartzite foundation, will be taken apart by a moving company and sent on trucks to its new location.
There will be a lot of work to do to restore the home, Allman said.
"The heart of the house will be moved intact," he said. "The rest will be needed to taken apart and put back up."
The Allmans will update the house's electrical, heating and cooling systems but plan to keep many of the remaining features of the house using information they've gathered from Sioux Falls museums. That includes the original windows and woodwork.
To be painted mauve, light green
The Allmans also plan to remove the existing vinyl siding and replace it with wood siding.
They'll paint the house a light green color with mauve accents matching the original pink quartzite foundation. The colors are true to the time period in which the house was built, Allman said.
"We found the house originally wasn't blue," he said.
The quartzite stone won't make up the house's new foundation, however. That will be poured concrete, Allman said.
Quartzite to be used for patio area
The stone instead will be used to create a new patio area behind the house featuring stone columns.
"That's one of the costs of doing it, but that's too much to the character of the house not to use the stone," he said.
The house's detached garage was purchased separately and will be moved to a new location by its owner near Sioux Falls' airport.
Erica Beck, senior planner for the city planning department and liaison to the city's historic preservation board, has watched the saga of the blue house with interest. She was surprised to hear the house was leaving the area but was pleased that it won't be demolished.
"The fact that it will be saved and used by somebody else is great," Beck said.
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Do you have access to any drawings, or when work is expected to start? 11 floors will be the total if my count is right, the same as the Qwest tower.
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