AIDAN POLLARD
News Editor
It may have less to do with neglect than some thought.
The Fenner House, which was set to be demolished following an architectural study commissioned by the campus, used to operate as Fredonia’s admissions building.
The admissions team was moved into Maytum Hall in 2018, and since then Interim President Dennis Hefner has returned to the university and had the unfinished issue left on his desk.
“I do not want this to be a problem that is dropped in the lap of the new president when they arrive here,” said Hefner. “This needed to be addressed. I mean, it was dropped in my lap when I walked into this office, and it would be unconscionable of me to leave this as a problem for a brand new president coming in. I want that president to come in and be able to work on issues that are critical to this campus and not have this, in a sense, hanging over their head.”
Hefner said he tried to do things like leave the house unoccupied but intact, sell or even give away the house, but was stopped by regulatory roadblocks from the state.
“Sometimes buildings, unfortunately, get to the end of their life,” said Hefner. “And this one had reached it.”
The decision to demolish the house has been met with some criticism by Fredonia community members, professors and the Fredonia Preservation Society.
Before the house was acquired by the Fredonia campus, it had been in a fire, and some of the structural supports of the building were burned.
The campus acquired the building with the intent to keep it standing and intact, and the building was renovated after the fire.
When the house was originally renovated, nothing was done to fix the burned supports, and the house’s current state of decay can be attributed at least partially to the damage done to those supports.
“They were only partially burned,” said Hefner. “… There was enough damage that over time, and with the heavy use that an admissions office has, that things gave way internally.”
To renovate the building another time, the campus would have to spend upwards of a million dollars, which would take away from focusing on other important campus issues.
“Some of the community people will be unhappy,” said Hefner. “Nobody has come forward with $1.5 million to preserve it, and I don’t expect that that will happen. But we do a lot of things to help the campus. Certainly the Lanford House, the Foundation House, the alumni House are all facilities that we are taking good care of to preserve for a long, long time. And in fact, after I read [the architectural study], I had our campus architect go through all of the facilities.”
The Fenner House is planned to be turned into a park-like structure with the house’s iconic beech tree as the focal point.
Hefner also hopes that the school will somehow be able to incorporate the building’s outer bricks into the park to keep the house alive in some capacity.
“SUNY would not want to give me the money to renovate it,” said Hefner. “I would be embarrassed if I did ask for the money to renovate it. That’s a lot of money for not much square footage. I can’t give it away because of the state it’s in, and with it not being up to reasonable codes, it would be a danger to others if the state were to go forward and try to sell it. So the recommendation that had come from the architect … that did the study was that it should be demolished at this time.”