BENTONVILLE -- An amended building relocation ordinance will allow historic structures to be moved and resettled in the city, including the former home of Louise Thaden.
A draft was written about six months ago and approved by the City Council on Tuesday. The council approved it with an emergency clause, removing the typical 30-day waiting period before ordinances go into effect.
Ordinance history
Bentonville’s original building moving ordinance dates to 1969. It was amended in 1996 and rewritten in 1999. The only amendment since then was in 2001, increasing the permit fee to $1,500.
Source: Staff report
"It was a can that was kicked down the road for a long time, and now it's in effect as we speak," Mayor Bob McCaslin said Friday. "There is no point in waiting."
There was no specific structure needing to be moved quickly prompting the emergency clause, McCaslin said. The ordinance has nothing to do with the Confederate statue on the downtown square, he said.
"It has nothing to do with the statue. Nothing, zero," he said.
Conversations about whether to remove Confederate monuments have taken place nationally after a white nationalist protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent Aug. 12.
Discussions to amend the Bentonville ordinance began after residents protested demolishing four houses on the corner of Southwest F Street and West Central Avenue, one being the former home to Thaden, an accomplished female aviator in the 1920s and 1930s, in May 2016.
Three of the houses were demolished, but Thaden's house was given to the Thaden School. Officials dismantled the house and moved it from West Central Avenue. It will be a feature on the school's future campus at the southeast corner of the intersection of South Main Street and Southeast Eighth Street.
The school opened Aug. 14 using space in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It will operate there until the temporary campus downtown is finished in mid-September.
Construction of the school's permanent facilities isn't expected to be done for another two years. The school will operate in a combination of temporary and permanent structures on its campus until then.
Prior to the most recent amendments, the building moving ordinance stated "No house, dwelling or structure shall be moved from outside or within the city to a location in the city ... Houses, dwellings and structures may only be moved out of or through the city."
The amended ordinance added "Historic structures as identified on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places or the National Register of Historic Places may be moved from a location in the city to another location in the city" as an exception.
Employees from several city departments identified issues and concerns with moving large structures through town. Their strategies to manage those issues are incorporated into the amended ordinance, Brian Bahr, interim community and economic development director, wrote to the City Council in a memo.
Some parameters within the ordinance include only allowing moves to begin between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Sunday as to not interfere with other traffic, prohibit routes to include certain streets close to the downtown square, confirming insurance covers infrastructure damage and a police officer and Street Department employee monitor the move.
A moving permit will cost $200 plus $200 per mile the structure travels within the city.
Cherie Clark, a Bentonville resident and advocate for preservation of historically significant buildings, said she was pleased with the city's response with an amended ordinance. She was heavily involved in the protests last year.
"We spoke, they listened," she said, thanking the City Council and McCaslin. "We never wanted to do away with the ordinance all together, but we wanted it modified so it could be used as a tool."
It would have been a dead end for the hundreds of people who signed the petition to save the home last year to just say they wanted to save Bentonville history, Clark said. This ordinance provides one way to do that "so we can respect our past while embracing our future."
NW News on 08/28/2017