Making a Difference
By Margaret Foster | From Preservation | November/December 2008
Barn, to go: High taxes and an offer from Wal-Mart
led Keith Benedict to sell his farm in 2004.
Credit: Jan Corey Arnett
Four years ago, when Battle Creek, Mich., resident Jan Corey Arnett saw Wal-Mart bulldozing a nearby farmstead for a superstore, she decided to take on the big-box giant. Noticing that the 86-year-old barn at Benedict Farm was still standing, she wrote a letter that appeared in a local newspaper warning of the imminent threat to the structure. As a result, a Wal-Mart official offered to work with her to save the building. "I guess I was just too determined," Arnett says.
Thanks to her diligence and a little persuasion from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Wal-Mart allocated $150,000 toward relocating the barn.
"We were most pleased that Wal-Mart decided to mitigate the impact of their store and kept their word to make saving much of the barn possible," says Peter Brink, senior vice president at the National Trust.
Last fall, after the Michigan Barn Preservation Network vetted proposals for reuse, a crew dismantled the barn and moved it to a site 70 miles away, where the strongest beams, rafters, and floorboards will become a smaller "teaching barn" for kids. Now Arnett plans to reconstruct another old barn on her property. Why? "So that children have an opportunity to see these wonderful places," she says.
Comments
Submitted by The Barn Lady at: April 14, 2009
Working with Wal-Mart was a long, exhausting, challenging, and painstaking process over those nearly 4 years of work to save the Benedict Barn to the fullest extent possible. Leaving it in-situ to remain an entire barn, perhaps as a greenhouse/landscape part of the Wal-Mart complex would have been preferable to just salvaging from it. The farmstead barns, heritage home, corn crib, mature flowering trees all would have made a marvelous setting for a heritage shopping complex had Wal-Mart employed vision by "thinking outside the box store." But those who assisted me from the National Trust, did the very best they could as compared to seeing the barn be completely destroyed with no thought to any kind of preservation by Wal-Mart in any manner. I do not regret the commitment of time and energy to try to save the barn, especially now that young people are enjoying a "new old" barn at a YMCA Outdoor Center. We all have to do what we can, however we can because it is true that one person can make a difference. "If it is to be it is up to me" as the saying goes. Find a heritage barn and become its advocate.
Submitted by Embarassed and disappointed at: December 30, 2008
My comment was less a criticism of the citizen's action against yet one more loss of our heritage due to Wal Mart's practices, than criticism of the Trust/Preservation Magaznine. Of all the wonderful preservation activities that occur around the country every day, that result in saving entire resources in their historic settings, the Trust/Preservation Magazine chose to highlight this case. Again, it leaves me disappointed and uninspired to remain a member of the organization.
Submitted by Next Best Thing at: October 28, 2008
When a historic structure is going to be entirely destroyed for development and someone is at least able to save something of it for reuse, records aspects of its history, and get a big corporation to care at least a little, give the Trust and the citizen some thanks, not criticism! We can't all be perfect but we can all do our best to make a difference.
Submitted by Embarassed and disappointed at: October 26, 2008
Highlighting such a story as a success for historic preservation and an example of the correct way to save our heritage makes me embarassed to be a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. When my membership renewal arrives in the mail, I'm unlikely to write that check!