The Kress building has a decades long interesting history with bats who held residence without ever being disturbed. The downtown building went under renovation when a private family purchased the building for residential redevelopment. Apparently during these refurb efforts the contractor negated the tenants ingress and egress pathways, forcing them to find new passages in and out of the building. The bats soon took over just about every floor on the building utilizing the elevator shaft as their main residence.
An effort was made to remove the bats from building, and from what I understand, approximately 1,800 bats ultimately died there. All told it seemed that about 3,000 bats took residence on Houston street. Until recently there was a black tarp hanging on a portion of the exposed brick facade. It was evident that the tarp had been placed to provide cover for the bats. During the day the bats presence was obvious with ground level guano, movement under the tarp, and shrill sound emitting. For several years the owner attempted to sell the structure unsuccessfully until a distress sale was finally funded before the building became foreclosed on. It seems that after the new owners moved in, the bats moved out. I can’t seem to find any information on what happened to the bats.
No doubt that flying rodents don’t exactly up your residential appeal, but I still want to know….. what came of our flying friends? It seems that the new owner is exploring turning the exposed brick into a work of art of some kind. They have proposed different ideas, but nothing seems to be set yet. I will be very interested to see what ends up happening here. I hope they at least incorporate a bat image in somehow though.
Around the Kress I noticed that Dixie House is coming, but Kevin beat me to it.
