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Unfair Park has learned that Glazer's Distributors -- owners of 508 Park Avenue, the building in which Robert Johnson recorded 13 songs that changed the music world -- has filed with the city a permit that would allow them to tear down one of the most historic structures in the city of Dallas. As mentioned in October, that building is among some three dozen singled out by Mayor Tom Leppert and City Attorney Tom Perkins, who are trying to bring vacant downtown buildings up to code.
But Pat O'Shea of Glazer's suggested in October that the city was hounding the owners, who've been trying to sell for years but could find no takers because of the homeless who surround the property day and night, as evidenced by the Google map above. Sources tell Unfair Park today that Glazer's has spent "close to a million dollars" to bring the building up to code in recent months, but that code enforcement officials kept insisting on "more and more changes," which Glazer's could no longer afford. Finally, the owners of 508 Park Avenue said, Enough.
Preservationists, of course, are panicked over the filing of the permit and trying at this very moment to find some way to save the building, which is part of the Harwood Street Historic District but is not itself a city-designated landmark structure. Sources say Glazer's has not yet filed a Certificate of Demolition with the Landmark Commission.
When reached by Unfair Park this afternoon, Leppert said he did not know a demolition permit had been filed.
Developing. Or, perhaps, just the opposite.
