Bonny Dorries ate lunch in the Lincoln Square Village food court with her back turned to the Historic Lincoln Hotel. Although she carries memories of holiday work parties inside the hotel, no guests have entered its doors since the March 2009 closing.

The hotel, at 209 S. Broadway Ave., has been a part of the Urbana community since 1924. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Sept. 8, 2006, and now Urbana resident Brian Adams would like to see it named a local historic site as well.

Rebecca Bird, a planner for the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), said Adams applied in 2008 to make the Lincoln Hotel a local historic site, but the Urbana City Council did not approve the request.

Bird said the City Council voted against the designation because the previous owner requested that the building not become a local historic site. Before the foreclosure, the owner wanted to make the hotel a national brand, and the companies he spoke with were uninterested in a deal if it was a local monument.

This past February, Adams applied for the second time for the Urbana-Lincoln Hotel to become a local historic landmark. The HPC met in April and determined that the property qualified as a potential local landmark and voted unanimously to recommend its designation to the Urbana City Council.

The City Council has pushed discussion of establishing the Lincoln Hotel as a historical site to the July 26 meeting, but Urbana resident and HPC member Scott Dossett brought it up at the July 12 meeting.

“I ask you to take seriously whether the City Council’s non-acceptance of the preservation commission’s prior passing of an ordinance to landmark the building did any good,” said Dossett, who supports landmarking the hotel.

Alderman Charlie Smyth questioned Dossett with concerns that the hotel’s additions in the ‘60s and ‘80s hurt the integrity of the original Joseph Royer design.

“The architect (Royer) is very important,” Bird said. “He was a pre-eminent architect. He designed the courthouse, and library also.”

Dossett countered Smyth’s worries about the Royer design.

“Certainly the Secretary of Interior standards, which we are asked to apply in these conditions, doesn’t exclude the building because of the additions that were made,” Dossett said.

“I think a lot of us would rather that those additions were removed, but it is also connected to Lincoln Square, which was also land-marked.”

Dorries, a Champaign resident, would like to see the building landmarked, but does not think it needs to look like the original building.

Rather, she said “there needs to be some updating to current building codes — modernization.”

If the Lincoln Square Hotel became a local historic site, the designation would require that the owner submit requests to alter the exterior appearance of the building said Bird. One advantage in the building being land-marked is that the owner would have building permit fees waived.

“For a building like the Historic Lincoln Hotel, this could be tens of thousands of dollars,” Bird said.

Dorries had her mind on money as well, thinking that the hotel’s closing was a loss of revenue for the city.

“It is nice to keep some of the businesses (alive) to keep the feel of the city,” Dorries said adding, that the hotel’s banquets “used to have the best cinnamon rolls.”