The owner, which promised to preserve the National Register-listed water tower, instead applied for a demolition permit. (City of Venice)

A c. 1916 water tower was saved from demolition yesterday after the city council of Venice, Fla., voted 5-1 against allowing the tower's owner, a local homeowners association, to tear it down.

"The preservation board feels [the association] needs to repair it," says Dorothy Korwek, the city's director of historical resources.

The decision came in response to a request made last July for permission to demolish the 55-foot wood tower the Eagle Point Homeowners Association has owned since 1991, when the luxury resort surrounding it became a private residential community.

Unused for about 15 years, the water tower is now missing its water tank and has a 20-foot palm tree growing through it. The association claims that the tower is unsafe, but city preservationists disagree.

"The tower has some deterioration around the concrete footings, but the rest of it looks pretty good," Korwek says, adding that because of the tower's location inside a gated community, monitoring its condition hasn't been easy. Members of the homeowners group did not return phone calls from Preservation Online.

The association signed a pre-annexation agreement in 1991 to keep and maintain the water tower, along with a pump house, clubhouse, and one of the resort's cottages. While executing an addendum to the agreement in 1997, it again promised to save the National Register-listed tower, which was built by early settlers of the area.

"The agreement clearly stated the tower to be maintained by the association forever," Korwek says. "It was a legal binding document everyone signed."

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