Marshall County residents had the chance to weigh in Thursday on what buildings they would like to see preserved for the future. Wythougan Valley Preservation Council President Kurt Garner discussed the importance of the group’s efforts. “There’s something called ‘slow fade’ in the preservation community,” he explained. “And that’s when you start to lose pieces that all of a sudden just kind of disappear from the landscape, and nobody really notices. So my hometown, my area, North Township – we’ve seen a 70-percent loss in just 25 years.”
He said for the past several years, the preservation council has been making a list of heritage properties to target for possible preservation efforts. Some of those include a West Township log cabin dating back to 1846 and the county’s last polygonal barn.
Garner also highlighted several structures in the Plymouth area that the organization is keeping an eye on. “The LaPorte Street Footbridge is one,” he said. “It is in need of restoration. The Old City Hall/Fire Station – it had been preserved in the past, but it’s at the point where it needs to have restoration again and it needs to find a use. I don’t want to wash over that too quickly because it’s important to get a use into these buildings and not just preserve them for the sake of preserving them.”
At the same time, Garner says the group is looking to expand its scope beyond individual buildings. “In many respects, I think that our idea about preservation needs to change a little more broadly and be thinking about whole downtowns,” he said. “And while Bremen and Plymouth and Culver have got main street organizations up and running that can help kind of provide support to their historic downtowns, Argos and Bourbon still do not.”
He added that the Wythougan Valley Preservation Council may also consider the preservation of forests and other natural landscapes.
However, Garner emphasizes that the group doesn’t have the money or the volunteers to accomplish all these efforts on its own. “When we formed, what we wanted to be was almost like a clearinghouse or an umbrella for groups like the group that’s formed to restore the Rees Theater,” he explained. “So over the years, we’ve done projects ourselves but then we’ve also been that umbrella for organizations.”
For example, he feels the City of Plymouth has enough historic properties to warrant its own preservation group.
