We get that no one on the Lisbon City Council wants to demolish the barns, that the ruling from the insurance company has likely spelled the fate for two of the barns on the Pleasant Grove Heritage Park property. No council ever wants to destroy any property the city owns, especially if there’s been money thrown into any of the buildings to previously save them. Tax payers tend to get a little irked about that as well.
We also get the amount of work that members of the parks and recreation board and Lisbon Historic Preservation Commission have put into trying to preserve these historical barns.
Over the past six or more years, Lisbon Historic Preservation Commission and the City of Lisbon have been working on the property from Steve McElmeel that was designated a nature park in Lisbon. That started with a Resource Enhancement and Protection grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to purchase the land.
After the land was purchased, the members of the Lisbon Historic Preservation Commission started an application to get the barns added to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district. That process can take some time to see completed, but it was done with the hopes of unlocking additional funding for those buildings.
In August 2020, all three barns suffered damage in the derecho, as did many buildings in Mount Vernon and Lisbon. It took time for the proper review of the damage, for insurance monies to be distributed and work to begin on stabilizing the barns, with Curtis Blinks completing work on stabilizing one of the barns in 2022, and work began on another.
We’ve had other storms since then, and the barns suffered additional damage, including from an EF-2 tornado last spring.
In that same timeframe, however, members of the Lisbon Parks and Recreation and Lisbon Historic Preservation Commission worked to get the new Pleasant Grove Heritage Park as an emerging site with Silos and Smokestacks, a way to draw more people focused on agricultural tourism to Lisbon to see this new park.
In November 2023, Lisbon Historic Preservation Commission approved a contract with OPN architects to do site and review work on the barns to begin the process of discovering what it would cost to not only stabilize the barns, but make them structurally sound.
The barns and other preservation activities were being discussed during the budget process for Lisbon over the past few months, with the council asking Siggins to find out what it would take to get the barns back under the city’s insurance once more.
Which all led to last Monday’s discussion on the barns. The insurance company let the city know that two of the barns are not only unstable, they are probably not structurally sound and a liability and issue for the city without remediation that they will not cover the city if they remain standing. The insurance company had totaled out the barns back in 2021, and the city had used some of that money on the stabilization efforts.
As mayor Doug O’Connor noted, the finances for the city currently will be strapped trying to save one of these barns, let alone demolishing the other two. Without significant financial help, the barns might have to be demolished. All options will probably cost money.
It’s also a huge setback for the Pleasant Grove Heritage Park’s plans, which would have been a display about past farming history. It also may mean a loss of the historic district that could have provided funding for work to the barns, as Rebecca Hess mentioned, as destroying two of the barns destroys that historic district.
All parties now have until May 13 to come up with a solution to save these barns or the council moves forward with plans to destroy them.
We get that preserving barns may seem unwarranted, but the plans for the displays outlined by the commission and parks were a way of highlighting agricultural history in our area, and losing two of these barns is a huge blow to the work volunteers have poured into their vision of this park.