A NEW HOPE
Group forms to save crumbling Guthrie publishing museum
GUTHRIE — A new nonprofit group wants to take the crumbling State Capital Publishing Co. building off the state’s hands, and took the first step Monday by filing articles of incorporation for Guthrie Tomorrow Coalition Inc.
“We chose that name because we don’t want this to be the effort of any one person or one small organization,” said Lynn Bilodeau, an attorney leading the effort who lives next door to the historic, 50,000- square- foot office building and publishing plant in downtown Guthrie.
The coalition formed just more than a year after the failure of a plan to save the 115-year-old building, a museum for nearly 40 years, by converting it into 34 units of senior housing, preserving the historic facade, and reserving a small space for a micro-museum.
The Oklahoma Historical Society was working with the state Office of Management and Enterprise Services, which then oversaw all
state-owned property transfers, and an outof-state housing developer. The plan hinged on a change in zoning to allow high-density housing downtown, the Guthrie City Council wouldn’t change it, and the developer withdrew.
That settled the old newspaper and job printing building back on the property rolls of the Historical Society, a state agency, but with one big difference.
After the Historical Society started considering the housing project, lawmakers lifted the agency from overview by the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and exempted it from guidelines for the disposition of surplus state property.
Before, the publishing building, as an underused state property, would have to be sold for no less than 90 percent of appraised value, or redeveloped with proceeds deposited in a statewide building maintenance fund.
Now, the Historical Society may sell historic properties at fair market value to “appropriate organizations or groups who agree to maintain the properties in the best interest of historic preservation.”
It has sold at least three historic properties since the new law took effect in May 2016.
On the Guthrie property, however, the Historical Society is still working with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and the 2015 request for proposals under which the housing development was being considered, said Bob Blackburn, Historical Society executive director.
Blackburn said he most recently spoke with city officials about possibilities for partnerships, and that the Historical Society would be directly involved in any case.
The 2016 law requires the Historical Society to first offer to sell surplus property to the original donor and it allows the agency to accept in-kind investments, such as repair and maintenance, in a purchase contract.
The Guthrie Chamber of Commerce donated the State Capital Publishing Museum to the Historical Society in 1975. Blackburn said Monday he had not spoken about it with anyone from the chamber.
Blackburn said he would be interested in any viable plan for the property that puts it to use and preserves it “not just for 10 years or 20 years, but for 100 years.”
Bilodeau said the new nonprofit coalition, in consultation with the city and chamber, wants to get it back to the chamber and into the hands of an organization that will preserve it and reopen it for public use.
“We want to work in concert with the city of Guthrie, the Guthrie Chamber of Commerce. We want to work in concert with the state of Oklahoma Historical Society. They’ve done tremendous work, and like every state agency they’re burdened right now. Well, we want to take some of that financial burden off,” Bilodeau said.
Step one came Monday with the filing of articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State.
Step two will come Tuesday night at an organizational meeting of Guthrie Tomorrow Coalition Inc., then recognition as a nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service.
And then, Bilodeau said, comes “the lofty, lofty goal” of raising money — millions of dollars — to repair the property and create an endowment “so it’s not a constant drain on the Historical Society, the chamber or the city of Guthrie.”
Officials said repairs alone could cost between $2 million and $4 million.
“First and foremost, we want to preserve the building. We want to maintain it. We want to make the necessary repairs,” said Bilodeau, who is an estate planning attorney with an office in Edmond.
Bilodeau said it’s his first foray into a nonprofit project, but that “top notch people ... who know what they’re doing in this arena” are already committed to it.