Historic building owner, town fail to communicate
by Mark Cowling | Florence Reminder & Blade Tribune
The owner of the historic Rapp Saloon in downtown Florence said she has been trying for weeks to get a simple straightforward answer from the town about what type of building permit, if any, she needs to make a cosmetic repair to the north wall of her building.
Although it’s been vacant recently, it has been a store and a residential rental over the years. Longtime downtown-area residents remember it as sculptor June Doerr’s studio and gallery. The current owner, also an artist, had hoped to move her art into the building. But with her husband’s career taking them out of the Southwest, their plans are now to repair the building and sell it.
The historic building was next door to the county elections warehouse that was gutted by fire in 2014. After that, the Rapp Saloon’s outer layer of adobe plaster began to separate or “delaminate” from the adobe brick of the wall that was next to the fire.
