Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, Sunday December 7, 2008
From lodge to luxury: New owner hoping to convert Jefferson Building to apartments
By
Don DodsonSunday December 7, 2008
Robin Scholz/The News-Gazette
Th exterior of the Jefferson Building on Hill Street in Champaign.
CHAMPAIGN – If Robert Grossman has his way, Champaign's old Masonic Temple could be divided up for luxury apartments.
The four-level building on the northwest corner of Hill and Randolph streets dates to 1914. For its first 52 years, it served as the home of Western Star Lodge No. 240.
After the Masons moved out in 1966, it was acquired by the Thomas Jefferson Life Insurance Co. and became known as the Jefferson Building. Several years later, attorney Lawrence E. Johnson acquired it and used it as an office building.
This fall, Grossman bought the 33,000-square-foot building from Mr. Johnson's estate. Since then, most of the tenants have moved out, and Grossman has hired architect Neil Strack to draw up plans for new use.
Grossman said when he initially bought the building, he thought he'd put offices there and preserve the upstairs auditorium and stage for special events. But the soft economy and the amount of downtown office space caused him to reconsider.
"There's too much available right now," he said.
Instead, he's planning to put in 22 apartments – five each on the lower and main levels and six each on the upper two levels.
The apartments would be mostly two- and three-bedroom units, ranging from 900 to 1,500 square feet. They would likely rent for $800 to $2,000 a month, he said.
T.J. Blakeman, a city planner who has researched the history of downtown Champaign buildings, said he wishes Grossman would pursue his original plan of using the building as a banquet center.
That would preserve the massive Masonic auditorium – 54 feet wide by 54 feet long – without cutting it up. It would also give downtown Champaign a place where conferences, wedding receptions and special events could be held.
Plus, Blakeman said, it's close to churches and the new downtown parking garage.
Blakeman, who lives near the Jefferson Building and considers Grossman a friend, said he's not blocking Grossman's plans for apartments despite preferring the banquet center idea.
"It's completely his decision, and the city is not getting in the way of it," Blakeman said. "Apartments fit right in the neighborhood. But it would carve up the auditorium space, and you'd lose that."
The auditorium takes up almost the entire upper levels, with a balcony on the west end and a stage on the east. It has huge glass windows that let natural light pour in, and ornamental columns lining the walls. However, the plaster ceiling has fallen in, a victim of seepage.
Grossman said he intends to preserve many of the architectural features, but dividing the building for apartments is the only way it can pay for itself.
He calculates the project's cost, including purchase price, at about $2.5 million. He said he hopes the project is done by next fall.
Strack said Grossman's approach is realistic.
"The city looks at the best use as being a meeting center. Bob looks at what will also pay for itself," Strack said. "Both alternatives will preserve the building. It's a question of how to handle it."
Blakeman said the Jefferson Building sat on the market for years after Mr. Johnson's death in December 2005.
"No one wanted to touch it," he said.
Grossman said the building's architecture is what attracted him, but he didn't know about the auditorium until he toured the building.
On that tour, he discovered other features, such as the 12-foot ceilings, oak floors and pocket doors in the main floor's parlor.
The lobby has terrazzo floors, beamed ceilings and egg-and-dart molding. Wall stencils are intact in other rooms, and Masonic symbols are incorporated in the building's stair railings.
There's also a walk-in safe that someday may be used as a closet by some lucky tenant.
"I was grinning ear to ear when I saw how beautiful it was. It was like a bonus," he said.
According to Strack, the building is "in pretty good shape to take back to the original."
Grossman, who lives in a century-old home at 704 W. University Ave., C, is the owner of Grossman and Associates, a software company, and The Estate Sale, an antiques and decor shop. That store recently moved to the former Champaign-Urbana Public Health District building on North Neil Street, and Strack was involved in the redesign of that building.
Blakeman said Grossman did a nice job renovating both his home on University Avenue and the public health district building.
"I have no doubt he'll do real quality work," Blakeman said.
As for specifics of the Jefferson Building project, Strack said he envisions a central atrium in the building with apartments on each side of it. Grossman said he hopes the roof will have garden space and a hot tub, and he'd like to make a lobby display of the marble light-control panel, now on the auditorium stage.
Already, bushes and trees have been removed from the Jefferson Building's grounds.
"They were so big, they were holding moisture against the building," Grossman said.
Said Strack: "The landscaping was way over-mature."
Blakeman calls the former temple "an extremely well-built building – the Masons did nice work.
"It's a remarkably grand building. I'm looking forward to it coming back."
Building history
10: Masons purchase land at Hill and Randolph streets from Isaac Kuhn for new temple. Freemasons founded their original lodge in Champaign in 1857.
1912: Ground broken for temple by oldest member, Dr. H.C. Howard, for whom Dr. Howard School in Champaign is named.
1912-13: Building erected by Stoolman Construction Co., based on architectural plans by Spencer & Temple, Champaign. Design is in the Beaux Arts style.
Jan. 8, 1914: Temple dedicated by Henry T. Burnap, the lodge's "most worshipful grand master." Original plans show a banquet room in the basement; a parlor, billiard room and card room on the main floor; the lodge room, stage and armory on the upper floor, and a "gallery" or balcony on the mezzanine. Building cost, including furniture: "about $100,000."
1946: Masonic Temple reaches peak of activity, with 23 regular meetings, 58 special meetings and 192 Masonic degrees handed out that year.
1966: Masons run into property tax snafu and take temporary quarters elsewhere; building eventually acquired by Thomas Jefferson Life Insurance Co.; roughly a decade later, attorney Lawrence E. Johnson acquires building and moves his law practice there and leases space to other businesses, including dance studios.
1974: Masons relocate to new building at 14 Bel-Air Court in south Champaign.
2008: Robert Grossman acquires building from Mr. Johnson's estate.
Sources: Building dedication program from 1914; Preservation and Conservation Association newsletter, July/August 1997
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