Hope returns to save Bergman farmhouse in Hoffman Estates
A potential plan to save the 116-year-old Bergman family farmhouse in Hoffman Estates has materialized after all, nearly two months after what had seemed the venerable home's last chance for preservation.
At Monday night's planning, building and zoning committee meeting, the village staff will seek approval from trustees to draft a three-party plan to rescue the house at the northwest corner of Algonquin and Ela roads from imminent demolition.
The plan will lay out the responsibilities of current owner M/I Homes, prospective buyer Evans Realtors, and the village itself.
Hoffman Estates' role would be to provide oversight of the preservation plan, not any financial backing. As interested as village officials have been in finding someone to preserve the farmhouse, they've been equally intent that taxpayers not bear the burden, Mayor Bill McLeod said.
"I'm cautiously optimistic this thing will work out," McLeod said Friday. "But this isn't the end. Maybe it's the beginning of the end."
He could not say how long it might take for the plan to come back before the village board for final approval. But for now it seems the house has escaped the near certainty of demolition this fall.
That was the very decision before the board in mid-September when Trustee Gary Pilafas suggested that one of two possible proposals to save the house hadn't been pursued as aggressively as the other.
Evans Realtors last spring had floated the idea of fixing up the house for resale, but that suggestion was considered dead two months ago because the firm had never provided any proof of its financial resources.
Pilafas argued that might have been because the company had never been asked, so more time was requested to find out.
Under the proposal, Evans Realtors will have to post 110 percent of the approved cost estimate for rehabilitation in advance to ensure any financial risk in preserving the home is its own.
Earlier this year, officials rejected the plan of a married couple who wanted to restore the home for their own use. The traditional mortgage they proposed wasn't deemed adequate for a reconstruction project on the scale of the Bergman farmhouse.
Both proposals were far from village officials' original intent to give the house to someone who would restore it as a public amenity or museum.
When no such plan came forward, it was decided that any chance of saving the house was better than none.
The farmhouse - occupied by a member of the Bergman family until mid-2015 - now lies on the edge of M/I Homes' developing 81-home subdivision on the 37-acre former farm.
M/I Homes had no interest in restoring the house but offered to donate it to the village to assist the original plan to make it a public venue.