After months of fits and starts, crews finally began mending a collapsed Oak Park building last week, paving the way for the return of a couple of long-shuttered businesses.
The one-story commercial building’s façade came crashing down last August, injuring a passerby and temporarily shutting down Harrison Street at the core of the village’s Arts District. The building, at 201 Harrison St., and the district, remain in a similar state five months later.
It’s probably going to be another five months until things are back to normal. The real work will start in about a month when Creative Contracting Resources receives the steel beams that will support the building, according to Robert Stehman, vice president of the Northlake-based construction outfit.
The handsome 1920s era building was too-far damaged to preserve its architectural details, but Stehman thinks neighbors will like the updated version.
“It’ll be a new, fresh look, but it will fit in with the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s not going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
Oak Park architect Tom Bassett-Dilley designed the spruced-up front side. He said the building was originally created using Louis Sullivan-inspired elements, and was “absolutely significant” in its appearance.
But trying to reassemble it in the same fashion would have been much more costly and time consuming.
“It’s brand new, in the sense that the brick that’s going up is new, and all of the material on the face of the building is going to be new,” he said. “But the structural lines are the same, and the overall shape and rhythm of the building is the same.”
The property is currently in foreclosure, after the River Forest resident who owns it, Chris Kleronomos, fell behind on a $3.5 million construction loan, for which he put 201-211 Harrison up as collateral, along with several other nearby properties. The partial collapse happened when workers hired by Kleronomos performed unpermitted work by removing parts of the building’s façade.
Kleronomos has not returned calls since the collapse, and his attorney, Mas Takiguchi, could not be reached for comment on Friday. But in December, Takiguchi claimed that it wasn’t his client’s fault that the building fell apart, and that Kleronomos was working with the bank trying to keep his buildings.
The court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the property could not be reached for comment, nor could the bank official watching over the fix up. Village Manager Tom Barwin said that the two sides are still fighting in court, trying to see who ends up owning the crumbled structure. He and Stehman expect repairs to wrap up by May.
“From what I’m hearing, it’s been adversarial with the owner trying to retain the properties, as the financial institution press forward with foreclosure,” Barwin said. “Hopefully these repairs will be done by April or May, and this foreclosure case will be completed by then, too.”
Stuck in the middle of the mess is Matt Kwilas, the owner of Prodigy Glassworks, which was left homeless following the collapse. He’s been blowing glass at another studio, trying to string together some income, but nothing close to what his studio was earning beforehand.
Kwilas is frustrated that it’s taken so long to get started, and that the front of his storefront is being rearranged without his input, or the input of Briejo Restaurant next door. Mostly, he misses warming up by the glass furnace during a day like last Friday.
“Five months, and no concessions made toward myself or Briejo,” he said. “I just wish I was in there and warm. My favorite part of the winter was running down the street, firing up the hole and standing in front of it while I warmed my bones up for 10 minutes, and I don’t have that this year.”
