Tonight, the Landmark Commission Will Discuss Tearing Down Just a Wee Bit of Magnolia Station. Still.

Whilst browsing through the City Secretary’s virtual stack of boards and commissions meetings scheduled for today, we came across this interesting shindig scheduled for this evening. The Landmark Commission is convening a Economic Review Panel to discuss demolishing a piece of the Magnolia Station, the circa-1911 Magnolia Petroleum Company office complex converted to lofts in 1993 by Bennett Miller Company. Sources to whom Unfair Park have spoken today say Bennett Miller’s trying to unload the property, but can’t do so unless it gets the Landmark Commission’s permission to raze a parking structure that has a building above it.

Magnolia Station is a city-designated landmark district, and Bennett Miller’s using one of four exemptions to get the building torn down: It’s not “economically viable.” The process isn’t a simple one: The Landmark Commission and Bennett Miller each appoint a commissioner who then select a third to discern the viability of the viability argument, dig? But it’s even more difficult this go-round, as neighbors have hired an attorney to fight the tear-down, as they’re worried a potential new owner wants to raze the parking structure to go up, up, up — thus, ruining their view of the American Airlines Center. Hence, today’s meeting, during which the public will be allowed to comment. How loudly, that’s up to the public. –Robert Wilonsky