Save Our Silos

Repurposing silos for raising crops.

A small Missouri company has big plans for idle elevators to serve as vertical farms By Ronald Ahrens Jim Kerns and David Geisler called up the other day from Springfield, Missouri, to ask a question of our readers: Are you aware of any municipally owned, abandoned grain elevators?…

FINAL Coy Barn and Milkhouse Landmark Decision at Fort Collins City Council Meeting Tuesday, July 5th

Hello Coy Farmstead Supporters,

This coming Tuesday, the City Council will finally vote on whether they will designate the Coy Barn and Milkhouse as historic landmarks. The buildings are on the Woodward site.

ACTION: We ask that you to send an email of support for the landmark designation to [email protected] as soon as possible. Just tell them in your own words why landmarking these buildings is important to you. Please don't mention Woodward or the silos.

If you can come to the meeting, too, that would be great. We can again show them that Fort Collins residents treasure our history and historic buildings and want them permanently saved. We think you wouldn't need to arrive until at least 7:30 or 8.

BACKGROUND: At the May 11th Landmark Preservation Commission meeting, Woodward offered to have them consensually designated if the city agreed with 7 conditions. The applicants from Save Our Silos and the LPC agreed to 6 of the 7 conditions. So we are very close to a compromise that might allow the Council to step up to the plate and designate these two highly significant historic buildings as landmarks in perpetuity.

Thanks to Bill Whitley for an excellent letter, and to those who wrote comments on it further expanding on the issues raised by City Council's having ignored the unanimous recommendations of the Building Review Board and the Landmark Preservation Commission, not to mention the City's Chief Building Officer and the best-qualified of the engineers weighing in on the silos' condition.

Letter: City Council ignored experts in preposterous silo decision Historical issues aside, this decision was preposterous.

Silos deployed to evoke a town's heritage, an opportunity now foreclosed at the Homestead Natural Area, on our National Heritage River corridor. Photos taken Monday in Antonito, Colorado, population 781--a town with commensurately fewer resources than Fort Collins, with our population of over 140,000 people. Like the silos that Woodward has just torn down, these stand at the gateway to the town.

We'd like you to see some of the paintings of the farmstead from earlier years. One is by a painter who was artist-in-residence at Yellowstone.