Campana was a cosmetics manufacturer started in Batavia, IL in 1927 by Ernest Oswalt. In 1937, the company built a new factory, an impressive mid-century modern glass block building, at 901 N. Batavia Ave. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, but by the 2010s was mostly vacant and in need of significant rehabilitation.
Evergreen Real Estate Group proposed a rehabilitation plan to the City of Batavia to transform the factory into about 80 apartments. To assist with the financing, the developer sought Federal and State Historic Tax Credits and, by designating about 64 of the apartments as "affordable," low-income housing tax credits from Housing and Urban Development.
The "affordable housing" turned some of the public against the project.
Preservation Partners worked with the League of Women Voters and the Fox River Valley Initiative to champion the project to the public and Batavia's City Council. After extensive reviews, the city council was posed to narrowly vote in favor of the project until owners adjacent to Campana, but in Geneva, lodged a legal protest against the project citing state zoning ordinances that required the Batavia City Council to approve the project with a supermajority. The Batavia City Council could not reach the necessary threshold and the project was denied.
Liz Safanda, Executive Director of Preservation Partners at the time, explained that she "felt angry and disillusioned and bitter that these different groups in Geneva that got involved... They were very worried about where these children would go to school. [Yet] there weren't going to be masses of children, mind you."
Losing this creative adaptive reuse solution has resulted in a beautiful and significant mid-century modern building remaining largely vacant and rarely maintained for about a decade.
Thank you for reading! If this story interested, inspired, or informed you, please consider subscribing to our monthly e-newsletter so more of these stories come right to you!
SOURCES: Batavia Historical Society, “Working at Campana,” The Batavia Historian 39, no. 2 (April 1998): 1-4, 9, https://bataviahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historian-Vol-39.pdf; "Plans for Apartments in Campana Building Move Forward," Patch.com, September 7, 2017, https://patch.com/illinois/batavia/plans-apartments-campana-building-move-forward; "Adaptive Re-Use Proposed for Batavia Landmark," Advocate (Spring 2017): 5; "The Campana Building - A Landmark in Limbo," Advocate (Fall 2017): 1-2; Liz Safanda, "Preserving the Tri-Cities: A Fifty Year History of Preservation Partners of the Fox Valley," interviewed by Al Watts, September 13, 2023, 1:17:29-1:22:52.