Plans for Broadway building sale cause dustup

For more than a year, Richard "Fred" and Donna Themm have been trying to sell an old building on the corner of Broadway and Sprigg Street they bought in 2004.

This week, Richard Themm had a terse phone conversation with Terri Foley, Old Town Cape's president and a historical preservation consultant.

Foley was upset to learn that a potential buyer was looking into having the building, at 633-637 Broadway, demolished.

She said Elroy Newton, a St. Louis businessman, contacted Old Town Cape to see if they would fight demolition plans.

"We're willing to work with anybody on rehabbing a building or putting a new building on a vacant lot," Foley said, but not "for demolishing one of the oldest buildings on Broadway."

Richard Themm said there's no way he can forbid potential buyers from demolishing the shop and he'll be unhappy if, eight months into working with a potential buyer, the sale falls through.

Repeated efforts to contact Newton were unsuccesful.

Built in the early to mid-1860s by German immigrant Julius Vasterling, the two-story building has been a dry goods shop, the Pine Saloon, a meat market and a soda shop.

"It was our dream to have a business downstairs and live upstairs," Donna Themm said. "It was just too big a project."

The Cape Girardeau couple wanted to restore the structure, but financing fell through and building codes stymied them.

"The building's pretty much in the same shape as it was three years ago," Richard Themm said. "It was just not a job for weekend warriors."

The Themms decided put it on the market in July 2006. They are asking $150,000.

Some architectural details, such as custom-made iron pillars on the facade, frosted and etched glass above the showcase windows and small glazed tiles near the doorstep hint at what the building once was.

Foley said the German Vernacular-style building is the last piece of history at Broadway and Sprigg Street.

Rehabbing buildings, she said, saves a community's heritage, puts money back into the local economy and reduces the pull on resources needed for hauling away old brick, wood and metal, as well as the energy and nonrenewable resources required for all-new materials.

She pointed to subsidies -- of up to 20 percent from the federal government and 25 percent from the state -- for historic buildings.

But Julius Vasterling's former shop would need to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Themms said they didn't know how to do that.

"I appreciate Old Town Cape and what they stand for, but I don't think they understand what they're getting into," Richard Themm said. He wonders why he's hearing from Foley and others now. "Where were they at a year ago? Where were they at all along? They should have bought it a year ago."

For now, the space is empty, subject to small repeated acts of vandalism, Richard Themm said.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127