By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph has taken a few steps to preserve its historic structures.
St. Joseph Historic Preservation Planner Kim Schutte hopes to help the city take a few steps more.
Schutte says whenever a community loses an historic structure, it loses a little piece of itself. Schutte says St. Joseph is full of historic homes and businesses.
“We tend to take it all for granted,” Schutte tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “We don’t understand that our stock of historic architecture could stand up against Charleston, South Carolina for example. We are on that level, but we take it for granted and when you take things for granted often you don’t take as good of care them as you should.”
Charleston has made a concerted effort to renovate its historic buildings and has even turned the revitalization into a tourist attraction.
Schutte says it takes effort and money to not just preserve, but renovate historic buildings, especially former businesses.
“When you’re looking at something like, for example, the German-American bank building, that Mosaic (Life Care) did such a beautiful job with downtown, it takes something like Mosaic to take on a building of that scope,” Schutte says. “Finding a use for a building that has that big of a footprint is often a challenge.”
St. Joseph residents sometimes have a more difficult time appreciating the historic nature of the city than outsiders. Or, at least, that’s the conclusion of Schutte, who has seen the reaction of those from other cities when they survey the historic buildings in St. Joseph.
“Now, it’s always interesting to me when outsiders, people from even Kansas City come to town, and they are blown away, I mean they just can’t believe what it is they’re seeing and they can’t believe that we’re letting it fall down and that we’re not using it and more excited about it,” Schutte says.
Schutte works with the Landmark Commission on preserving St. Joseph’s historic structures.