There have been some recent developments with the three downtown area buildings that the City of Jefferson owns.

The most recent acquisition was the former Pizza Ranch building. The City took ownership  in March of 2017. It has been vacant since January 2015 when former Pizza Ranch owner Robert Schultz was accused of setting the restaurant on fire. He entered an alford plea in December of 2016 and pled guilty to a felony for criminal mischief and a misdemeanor for arson. He was sentenced to three years of probation. Since then City Administrator Mike Palmer says they’ve removed the asbestos from the building and have done interior demolition. He talks about the next steps.

“Pizza Ranch will not be returning to that building. (We) Had them take their signs away. We will be taking the front of that building off and underneath it is actually three separate buildings. So it’ll be interesting to see what those separate buildings are going to look like once we get the face off. (We’ll) Move forward to try and restore those faces to get those back more to historically appropriate (look). And then we’re just hoping to sell the buildings.”

Another building is having a complete tuckpointing project done to the exterior of 200 East State Street. Palmer notes that the last step for that building is going to be installing upstory windows. Finally, 205 North Wilson Avenue was the first building the City acquired. Palmer says extensive work has been done to the interior, and now they are looking to finish up the exterior.

“We can also put on a whole new storefront for this building. It’ll be a nice glass storefront that’s more historically appropriate. We’re trying to bring that building back to what it looked like more when it was built, probably in the early 1900s.”         

The City Council previously authorized renovations to city-owned downtown buildings not to exceed $175,000 through tax increment financing (TIF).