If you want to save historic buildings, then you have to start early

From a journalistic perspective one of the few good things I find about social media is that you can get an actual idea about how many people are reading a story or how interested folks are in it. Sometimes our readers really surprise me about just how interested they get in a particular story.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Some stories I expect that there won’t be a high interest in, such as a routine fiscal court meeting where they are buying a few new ambulances. The story will get read, but understandably there won’t be an enormous interest in it. You know that going in but you still run the story because it is important to let people know what their government is doing and what is happening in their community.

Then you have a few stories that totally blow up on social media and surprise you. A good example is a story we ran a few weeks ago about a woman, who pleaded guilty to DUI with her grandchild in the vehicle. She stuck her tongue out in her jail mug shot.

At last count there were over 70 shares of that story and over 50 comments. I’ll just sum up the comments I read by saying the defendant is probably fortunate that she took a plea deal rather than taking her chances with the jury trial because I don’t think she would have fared very well.

We had one story this past week that really seemed to grab your interest about the old blue Karaoke building at the bottom of Gordon Hill in Corbin, which used to be a garage. It is slated to be torn down in order to expand parking for Sweeties and so the store can be expanded.

The story got over 100 comments on Facebook. Some of you seemed to take exception to the term “eyesore” in the story. I was glad to see owner Jim Bruso take to Facebook to clarify the building has been inspected and deemed not structurally sound.

The comments that really caught my attention though had to do with criticism of the building being torn down in general. “Corbin erasing it’s history one building at a time!” one reader wrote.

I hate to see many of these old, classic buildings come down, particularly if they can be saved.

The problem is that you frequently don’t hear much “uproar” about saving an old building until it reaches the point of deterioration where it would cost a fortune to save leaving demolition as the only realistic alternative.

The original St. Camillus Academy building off Master Street in Corbin is a good example. After it was announced in late 2007 that the more than 90 year old building would be demolished, I remember multiple people commenting about what a shame it is that the building wasn’t being saved. At that point, it was too late to save it.

I would encourage those of you out there interested in saving historic buildings to form a committee or group now to start identifying buildings, which will be in danger of being demolished in 10 or 15 years, and then start working to save those buildings now.

A good example of such an effort is the old Lane Theater in Williamsburg, which opened on July 15, 1948, and closed 1987.

If not for the Williamsburg Action Team, which purchased the Lane Theater from the city in August 2002 for $58,300, then the old theater site likely would have ended up becoming a parking lot for a nearby business.

The Williamsburg Action Team got a grant in 2007 to pay off the mortgage, but it is still seeking funds to renovate and restore the structure. A 20-year-old estimate to restore the building was $2.2 million. It is likely substantially more than that now.

However, the group is still preserving the building and giving hope that it can be restored in the future.

There is a similar effort to preserve and restore the old Carnegie Library in Corbin that seems to be going a little better fundraising wise. My point is, for those looking to preserve old buildings, the effort to save them has to start sooner rather than later.