Cause of historic Masonic Temple fire in Aurora still unknown

Nov. 7--The piles of rubble at Benton and Lincoln streets in Aurora signal an ignominious ending to the once glorious and historic Masonic Temple.

City officials said this week the building is almost entirely demolished, the end of years of monetary investment by the city in hopes of turning the building into something else and saving it for its historic value.

Aurora Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Rhodes said an investigation into the cause of the fire that significantly damaged the building last month is still ongoing. The possibility exists the fire department may never know for sure how the fire started because the building was so dangerous, investigators could not immediately gain access after the fire.

"It's very, very difficult to try to do the investigation process with bigger fires," Rhodes said. "A lot of that stuff depends on witnesses and a lot of components coming together."

Social media has been on fire with speculation and comments from people who live near the building that they saw people sneaking in at times, sometimes starting fires for heat. The building was vacant for 11 years.

Aurora Fire Marshal Javan Cross said all evidence has been collected and the temple is now torn down. Investigators are reviewing video and photos taken from inside.

"It is not an ideal investigative environment, so basically we are going to do the very best that we can and go from there to see where the evidence leads us," Cross said.

John Curley, Aurora's chief development officer, said unlike other historic buildings in the city that have seen redevelopment, the Masonic Temple turned out to be "so functionally obsolete" that redevelopment was a costly proposition.

"It was the most challenging historic building that I've dealt with since I've been at the city," Curley said.

In recent years, the city has made use of federal and state historic tax credits available for historic redevelopment. Downtown buildings such as the former St. Charles Hospital that was remodeled into apartments, the Terminal Building, the Keystone Building, the former West Aurora School District Administration building and the Hobbs Building have made use of the tax credits.

But in the case of the Masonic Temple building, redevelopment of the building would have meant changing the nature of the building so much, the project would not have been eligible for the tax credits.

The most likely use for the building would have been residential, but that would have required adding more outside windows. That alone would have been enough of a change to the building to rule out historic tax credits.

When the temple building was built in 1922, it was done by an alliance of five different Masonic temples. Each had its own ritual space that was somewhat like an amphitheater. So on three of the floors, most of the square footage was taken up by horseshoe-like seating balconies. To turn the building into housing, those balconies would have had to be removed. But doing that would have precluded use of the historic tax credits to raise money.

Still, there was interest.

At one point, the city awarded a $300,000 federal Community Development Block Grant to an individual to help purchase the building. He operated a banquet and catering facility in part of it until November 2008, when the city shut down the facility for code violations. After years of warnings, inspectors found potentially hazardous shifting on the outside concrete.

The city also once paid another owner about $500,000 to pay the mortgage on the building so the owner could spend money on renovation. When that proved too costly, the owner sold the building.

Ald. Michael Saville, 6th Ward, a long-time alderman, said he remembered the City Council authorizing both expenditures.

"I think the city did its best to try to save an historic structure," he said. "It was to help a business get on its feet. Unfortunately, it didn't succeed."

Curley said he recalled two times the city paid about $50,000 to have emergency repairs done to the building.

In 2015, the city secured a demolition order on the building, after about a year of going through the process. But at the time, the city also was doing a demolition of more than $1 million on the former West Aurora High School building at Galena Boulevard and Blackhawk Lane -- where Blackhawk Park on the West Side is now -- and Curley said that was considered a higher priority for demolition.

In short, the city needed about $750,000 to tear down the Masonic Temple. The priority at the time was that there was a better chance of redeveloping the Masonic Temple than the old school building, Curley said.

In 2017, he said the city got its most viable interest in the Masonic Temple building. Several Masonic groups visited the building to see if they could possibly use part of it.

Another developer in 2017 showed so much interest that it spent its own money to have a contractor do estimates on the building. At that time, the estimate was it would take $1.7 million just to fix the veneer of the building. Because the developer wanted to use the building for housing, "it precluded using the tax credits," Curley said.

Curley said there even was interest as late as last summer in redevelopment of the building.

"All along, even though it would have been the toughest reuse of a building we had, there had been interest," Curley said.

slord@tribpub.com

mejones@chicagotribune.com

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