If you recently moved to the area and began reading our local papers — maybe perusing the letters to the editor section to get a feel for what’s important to us — you might be led to believe that The Collins Building on Everett’s waterfront is an icon of historic magnitude on the scale of some Roman ruin.
Of course, a Roman ruin it is not. Named after a casket-making business that was located in it years ago, The Collins Building is a four-story rectangular shaped building on Everett’s waterfront located on the peninsula where the Port Gardner Wharf project will be built one day. Constructed in an area that was once tidelands, it sits on pilings because the fill dirt brought in during the early 1900s couldn’t support a decent foundation. Structurally, it’s unsound by today’s standards. It even leans a little.
It’s what’s happened inside that really gives it a historic story of any kind. The Collins Building, argue those who want to save it, represents the rough and tumble waterfront past that really defined the first 100 years of Everett and the region.
Like grand dad in his waning years, The Collins Building no longer earns a paycheck. It’s functionally obsolete.
But, like grand dad, he is in our midst, very present, and a respected member of the family. Full of great stories and leaning over a little bit. Creaky and cranky, but a lifetime of history every time we take the time to sit and listen. To keep the stories going after he’s gone, we need a way to preserve him. To capture the stories. To respect his past.
Port commissioners, citizens, a panel of experts, allegations in law suits, and murmur at local coffee shops on both sides of the preservation question struggle with one key question: How to pay for the very expensive rehab and necessary upgrades to preserve it and allow people and the public to use it for some purpose today. That means that it has to collect enough rent or generate enough revenue or public good in some other way to pay for the preservation and operating costs.
Historic buildings that can’t be reasonably restored and used either as tourist destinations or to function as safe and efficient offices, apartments, and the like have a hard time making the preservation case unless — as the Roman ruins do — preserving them is of considerable public good. It’s too bad. If it were built on something other than pilings and fill dirt, The Collins Building would have a chance. Paradoxically, it’s attractiveness as a waterfront icon is the reason it probably can’t remain one given the foundation problems.
But the Collins Building offers a unique opportunity, one that the Port has offered to pursue at different intervals.
Disassembled carefully and stored, the exterior siding. interior timbers, and window frames that really define the building could be incorporated into the future Port Gardner Wharf or even used elsewhere in town, preserving the story and some of the physical features within a structurally sound modern day building or development. This happens all the time and is done with often terrific results. A monument or building feature, if you will, built from the parts of the old, tucked in with the new, and useful today.
Change is hard. Admitting defeat is hard. But the Collins Building debate need not be a win/lose proposition.
A disassembly plan that allows the preservation and eventually re-incorporation of a meaningful slice of Everett’s history into it’s future is a compromise that saves its parts and buys time. It’s demise in its current location is imminent, though.
Disassembling and saving its parts will honor it the way saving grand dad’s war medals, pictures, and the icons of his life honors him after he passes.
Icons and pieces of his life that are scattered throughout our homes today so that we and our kids can touch and know the stories of his life and incorporate his heritage into ours.
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