The so-called Ikon Building will be demolished this summer. (APVA Preservation Virginia)

This summer, the city of Norfolk, Va., will tear down its oldest commercial building to make way for its second convention center.

The city, which bought the 1869 S.A. Stevens & Co. Building and two other historic buildings nearby to clear the way for the $125 million convention center and Hilton Hotel, is looking forward, not backward.

In fact, in March the city council voted 6-2 to approve a $7.5 million "performance grant" to Robert L. Johnson's RLJ Development of Bethesda, Md., as an incentive to begin the project.

The city plans to start construction in June, which means the end of the Stevens Building, also known as the Ikon Building, the 1930s Beechcroft and Bull Building, and the Decker Building, whose white stone facade will be salvaged and re-attached to another part of the development. That gesture is not enough, says a local preservation group.

"You can still have the convention center and hotel; just design it differently," says Alice Allen Grimes, president of the Norfolk Preservation Alliance. "They just don't want to. They don't have any interest in it." (City officials did not return phone calls from Preservation Online.)

It's not just the loss of three buildings that concerns Grimes and other residents. Because the city lacks a demolition provision in the downtown ordinance, its National Register-listed historic district is slowly disappearing. "Over the years they have, bit by bit, been picking off buildings that have been listed as contributing structures," Grimes says. "You can tear down any historic building downtown without any special review."

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