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The red bard at Deloney Avenue and King Street is listed in the county and national registers of hiscoric places. However, it wasn't on the list Town of Jackson officials used to approve demolition permits, and it was approved for dismantling. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

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A barn that is believed to have been built in the 1920s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places is being dismantled because of a permitting error.

The barn, which belonged to the Van Vleck family, is included on several historic registries but was not included on the list used by town staff when considering whether to approve demolition permits.

Under a year-old ordinance, town staff are required to consult a list of historic and significant properties published by the Teton County Historic Preservation Board before issuing a demolition permit.

If a property is included on that list, town staff are required to refer the situation to the board, which then reviews the project and can recommend a 90-day stay that would allow the group to document the property and advise the property owner of its significance.

In the case of the barn, the board was not notified and did not have a chance to review the project because the structure was not on the list of historic properties used by the town.

“Unfortunately, the original list provided to us by the Teton County Historic Preservation Board had only been updated on the [Historic Preservation Board] Web site,” Planning Director Tyler Sinclair said. “The barn was included on one but not the other.”

The barn is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as “Van Vleck House and Barn.” That same listing is included on the Wyoming State Preservation Office’s Web site, which includes several photos of the structure, and on the Teton County Historic Preservation Board’s Web site.

The barn also was the location for the denouement of the 1980 film Every Which Way But Loose in which Clint Eastwood (Philo Beddoe) fights Jack Wilson (William Smith) in a bare-knuckle brawl.

However, it is not on the original list submitted with the town ordinance that was passed in 2008. That list simply includes the Van Vleck house but makes no mention of the barn.

After reviewing the demolition application and determining that the structure was not on the list of historic properties, town staff approved the demolition and a contractor went to work.

“I apologize for what happened,” Sinclair said. “It was a very unfortunate miscommunication and one that I wish didn’t happen, but it did, so now we’re trying to do what we can with the situation and working to prevent it from happening again.”

Sinclair said he requested that the contractor and the property owner halt the demolition process to allow the board and town staff time to assess the situation.

The preservation board is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 5 p.m. to discuss the matter and Sinclair said he planned to meet with the property owner to try to figure out what could be done to remedy the situation.

A clean-up effort

The barn sits on a piece of property owned by Deloney Street LLC, a company that consists of Max Chapman Jr., Jafar Neishabouri, and Mercer Reynolds, according to county records and the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Web site. Chapman said there were no immediate plans to develop the parcel and that the group simply wanted to “clean up the block.”

“Not in these economic times,” Chapman said when asked about specific plans to develop. “We want to just hold the property and beautify it. The town has done cleaned up the area behind the barn and the new school was just built.”

Chapman said the group went through all the proper channels and obtained the necessary permit before starting to demolish the barn.

“You have Jedediah’s, which is an historic building,” Chapman said. “The feeling was to take the property, which had been neglected for years and get the cars off of it, cut down the weeds and get some green in there, get some flowers growing.”

Neishabouri denied having any knowledge of the project and said the he was not involved with it when asked about the barn’s status by a News&Guide reporter.

Alice Richter, a member of the Teton County Historic Preservation Board, said the mistake was regretful but chalked it up to a new organization dealing with a new ordinance.

“It’s a new ordinance, and maybe we goofed up, too, by not updating the official list,” Richter said. “I can’t say that I entirely blame the town. It’s a new system, and we’re still getting our act together. We’ve all learned from this, and hopefully we won’t be tearing down anymore buildings on the national register.”

Board members were able to take some solace in the fact that the contractor who was hired to take apart the barn, plans to rebuild it.

“I numbered some of the pieces of siding and took a lot of pictures of it,” said Brent Tometich, the contractor working on the barn. “It’s a pretty simple construction, but I don’t think I can rebuild it exactly how it is now because I don’t think it would meet current codes. A few things might be different on the inside, but I’m going to try to preserve the looks as much as I can.”

Tometich said he planned to rebuild the structure south of Jackson, but he declined to offer further details. He said he has already had to address several concerned residents who asked him about the project.

“A lot of people have come up to me with concerns since I started working on this,” he said. “It would have been impossible to move as a structure because of its size and how it was built. I really wanted to maintain it and didn’t want it to get torn down and just thrown in the dump. I just want to reassure people it won’t be destroyed.”

Tometich said he took the job to help ensure that the structure was not simply demolished and torn apart.

Move not ‘ideal outcome’

Sara Adamson, another member of the preservation board, said that although having the barn reconstructed somewhere else is preferable to demolition, it’s still not the ideal outcome.

“From the standpoint of strict preservation practice, the barn being saved by being moved is not really a victory,” she said. “It would still be preferable that the building be preserved in place. When buildings are moved, they are no longer eligible to or listed on the National Register, because the integrity of their setting and their relation to the surrounding physical context is lost.

“In this case, the barn is associated with the house, and it is significant as a vestige of the earliest settlement of the town of Jackson, and both of these associations will be lost. Moving it will not only put the barn in an artificial context but will also remove from Jackson’s downtown yet another historic building representing the town’s early history.”

Adamson suggested restoring the barn as part of an adaptive project that would give it a new use, such as a retail store.

Dick Stewart, the grandson of the Van Vlecks who originally owned the property, said he estimated the barn was built in the 1920s and was used by the Van Vleck family as a working barn until the 1940s, after which time it was largely used for storage.

Although he has fond memories of going into the barn during his childhood, Stewart said the reality of the situation is that most of the historic buildings in town will probably be razed.

“All of the buildings on that property will probably come down and something bigger will go up,” Stewart said.

Stewart said the demolition is indicative of a larger trend in Jackson.

“This is the second historic building we lost this summer,” he said. “It really saddened me to see the grade school get torn down, too. I entered the fourth grade when that was new and it really saddened me to see it go because I grew up there.”