DES MOINES, Iowa — Des Moines City Council has made a final decision on an issue that's been plaguing them for months: what to do with the Highland Apartments.
On Monday, the city council approved Invest DSM's request to demolish the building.
Back in April, the organization announced its plan to demolish the Highland Apartments and create a new mixed-use development site, The Commons at Highland Park.
The apartments were abandoned for several years prior to talks of demolition. Originally, Invest DSM planned to renovate the property, before determining that renovating was not economically viable.
Invest DSM initially brought their proposal to the city council in late April. However, the city council postponed the decision in order to give developers time to survey the site and create proposals to rehabilitate it.
That's because Highland Apartments might have met the criteria to become a historic landmark in Des Moines. In fact, Des Moines Heritage Trust identified Highland Apartments as an endangered historic building in early May.
Watch: Des Moines City Council discusses Highland Apartments building at Monday, June 12 meeting
That extra time wasn't enough: council members voted on Monday to demolish the building instead of exploring development options pitched by the Hatch Group.
"The Highland Park project should have been identified years ago as a potential project if it were to take advantage of these state and federal programs," the Hatch Group wrote in their proposal.
"It is too late to apply for any [Iowa Finance Authority] funds until next year ... It is also too late to receive historic federal and state housing tax credits," the Hatch Group wrote. "These two sources of funds are absolutely essential to complete the project."
For members of the surrounding community, the last push to salvage the building was too little, too late.
"For the past 30 years, we as a neighborhood have watched this building deteriorate," said Bill Wheeler, a nearby property owner. "It's not fair to us. And we want to see something done."
The city council ultimately agreed with Wheeler and with Invest DSM, saying rehabilitation was too costly and the apartments offered too little revenue to offset those costs.
Still, council members seemed unhappy with the decision they felt they had to make.
"There are folks here that are sympathetic, and would like a different outcome. But a scramble at the end is not the way to get there," said Josh Mandelbaum, a council member for Ward 3. "And so if we want to avoid these types of situations in the future, and we want to continue to move our community forward, because I think we want both of those things, we should learn some lessons from what has happened here."
The council is now requesting City Manager Scott Sanders look into property maintenance codes and the historic building inventory process to ensure another building with historic significance doesn't fall into such a state of disrepair.