John Faherty, and Sharon Coolidge

CIN

A seven-hour meeting saved a 102-year-old Over-the-Rhine building Monday night. By the time the members of the city's Historic Conservation Board finally made their unanimous decision, those two periods of time only seemed to be of equal duration.

The Davis Furniture building on Main Street might just see another 100 years. But if that happens, it won't be cheap.

And the building may never again have a night of such exquisite drama. The highlights include an offer of forgiveness that was not accepted, a potential developer telling a bald lawyer that he backed out of a deal because it was "too hairy," and then the lawyer asked him to explain what that means.

There was a debate about the proper pronunciation of the word "applicable" during a heated back and forth, and finally, an accusation, or perhaps an observation, that the whole thing was an exercise in a Kabuki theater of the absurd, at which point the stenographer actually stopped, looked towards the ceiling, and figured out how to spell Kabuki.

Finally, the Stough Group accused the Office of the Urban Conservator of eliciting "sham" bids to just make them look bad. Yes, it was that kind of night.

During a break, Michael Stough sort of backed off the accusation, and said he was just emotional. Then he said, "still, it does give one pause."

The Stough Group is the owner of the blighted and empty building, but it has not owned it long. Michael Stough's company bought it from a sheriff's auction in May 2013 with the intention of rehabilitating it. The "building" is technically two buildings, but it appears as one.

The Stough Group bought them for $125,000 — but like all properties in the sheriff's sales, potential buyers aren't allowed inside before purchase.

Stough said he had every intention of fixing the building up and pointed to his decades on the block and his history for saving and rehabbing buildings. His lawyer, the pugnacious C. Francis Barrett, sometimes made that point for him.

Once Stough got inside the building, he says he saw a disaster he did not anticipate. He got bids from contractors trying to find out what it would cost to fix it. He said it was in ruins. Those bids to fix were north of $1.5 million.

Stough deemed the building to not be economically viable, dangerous and bad for the neighborhood and applied for a permit to tear it down in February 2014. The Historic Conservation Board told him to slow down. To find out his best options, to figure out if there was a way to make it work financially, or to try to sell the building.

Those efforts to try to sell the building consumed nearly the entire night. Eventually, 15 parties expressed an interest. And three parties made an actual offer for the building. Those companies were Grandin Properties, 3CDC, and just this past week, Tender Mercies.

None of those bids would make the Stoughs a ton of money and might not even cover their costs. Barrett and Stough spent the night saying the offers were not made in good faith and could not even be considered bona fide offers. They implied repeatedly that Larry Harris, the city's Urban Conservator, was somehow in on eliciting sham bids.

Harris, when asked if that was true in any way, said, "No." When asked why he would be accused of such a thing, he said: "I have no clue. It is beyond reason. It is not an ethical response to any matter. It makes no sense."

The Stough group never made legal counter offers to any of the bids. The group did not come back with higher numbers or different language in counter proposals. Michael Stough wanted a guarantee that a new owner would rehab the building, and not just tear it down. And he wanted a timeline.

Now he is in the unusual position of trying to sell a building while actively trying to tear it down and stating in an open hearing that the building is "economically unfeasible."

Has he ever been in this type of position before? "No, I have not," Stough said. "But I know if we can't make this work, we don't think anybody can."

And still, there are bidders. The most active of which, has been 3CDC, which eventually made three offers beginning at $150,000 and ending at $200,000. Stough and Barrett said they did not consider the bids to be made in good faith.

During the hearing, Sara Bedinghaus testified for 3CDC, "to reiterate our opposition to demolition, and to reiterate our interest in purchasing the building."

Bedinghaus, 3CDC's senior development officer, went on to express dismay that 3CDC's offers would be considered part of a sham, or not bona fide offers. "I cannot fathom why we would offer to buy a building if we did not intend to do so."

When Barrett got his chance to ask questions, he did not waste time. He expressed his opinion that 3CDC's offer included language that was not tenable or reasonable. He also wanted to know exactly how much time it would take for 3CDC to rehabilitate this building.

When she told him about something being applicable, he corrected her pronunciation of the word. There is some linguistic debate about whether to hit the "app" or the "plic" when saying "applicable" but both are considered appropriate.

Near the end of the meeting, one of the people who came to give his opinion that the building should not be demolished, Casey Coston, called the entire process a bit of Kabuki theater, saying it was a pretense.

Only then did things become almost surreal. Danny Klingler, asked to speak, and began by responding to Stough's earlier dismay at the amount of vitriol he had faced in the community because of his efforts to demolish the building. Klingler apologized to Stough for any role he had played in that vitriol. Klingler then offered his forgiveness to Stough for his efforts to tear down the building. Stough was a little taken aback, and responded: "I didn't ask for your forgiveness." Klingler was undaunted, and said, "That's fine, I still give it."

Just before 1 0 p.m. the Historic Conservation Board stopped spoke with nearly one voice. They said that the building would indeed be difficult to fix, and costly. Still, they said, the offers to purchase the building by Grandin and 3CDC could not and should not be dismissed as not bona fide or in good faith.

The offers, they decided, might have been low, but they were not crazy low. Tender Mercy's offer was late, and not given much consideration by the board, although it said that offer too needed to be considered.

So, the proposal to tear the building down was rejected. In 20 days, the city's legal department will send the Stough Group a letter telling them as much, and then they will have 30 more days to appeal the ruling, sell the building, or fix it themselves.