Developer Frank Perri’s latest project for South Bend’s East Bank area is prompting the move of an historic building but it’s not traveling very far.
The Z. Crepeau building has stood at 307 N. Hill St. since 1892. But about a month from now it will have a new address, 526 E. Colfax Avenue, pending approval of a special trucking permit Tuesday by the city’s Board of Public Works.
The building houses Roxann’s Hair Boutique. Owner Roxann Reasor says that as she was preparing to sign a 5-year-lease with Perri, the property owner, he noted his plans for the property were to develop The Yard, an outdoor family-friendly entertainment venue. The plans don’t include keeping the building there.
”I said, well, if you’re going to do that why don’t you just sell me the building cheap and I’ll relocate it," Reasor says.
Reasor says the move will probably happen in about a month and she’ll have to operate from another location for a couple months. Her upstairs apartment tenant also is temporarily relocating during that time.
“I’m a little nervous, you know, it’s a 130-year-old building so yeah I’m definitely a little nervous.”
But she says she trusts the mover, Lykowski Construction. In 1995 they moved her husband Terry’s house from Lake Syracuse to Bremen. A few years later they also moved the historic home that now houses Inspire Me! at Colfax and Hill, next door to where the Crepeau building is moving. That house originally stood across Hill Street from where the Crepeau Building is now.
One more historical tidbit: In the 1980s the Crepeau Building housed Sugar and Spice, a candy store operated by partners Don Tarner and Sue Petsche, who owned the building with her husband Frank. Their upstairs tenants included a young Mark Tarner, who went on to found South Bend Chocolate Company.
