Answer Man: Will the vacant Newberry Building on downtown square ever come back to life?

Because no one has bought it yet?

Or here's a theory: It's been vacant because some 72 years ago the owners of the Newberry Building bought the next-door movie theater and its parking lot and put it all under roof and today there's no parking?

I don't know.

It certainly is not that no one is trying to get the space filled. The building that once housed J. J. Newberry Co., known here in Springfield as Newberry's on the Square, is for sale — as we speak — for $750,000.

It was part of ‘Dimestore Corner'

Newberry's glorious grand opening in downtown Springfield was Oct. 18, 1930. It closed Dec. 24, 1976 — 46 years later. By then, the parent company was McCrory Stores.

It was a 5-cent, 10-cent and 25-cent department store nestled between two similar stores on Park Central Square: S.S. Kresge to the east (where the Park Central Branch Library is today) and F. W. Woolworth to the north (where Anvil Custom Leather is today.)

The site was called “Dimestore Corner.” Years ago, a recording of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” would play before Newberry's closed for the day.

Matt Blevins is someone who would like to see the building occupied. He's the real estate broker.

“I certainly believe the building is worth saving in its current shape,” he tells me. “It definitely has character in it.

“You could do just about anything in the building. The trick is to find that niche that best suits it.”

The owner is the Newberry Building Limited Liability Company, which once had several partners. Now it's down to one, owner Austin O'Reilly. He's the founder and CEO of Dynamic DNA Laboratories, in Springfield. O'Reilly lives primarily in Texas.

One of few downtown buildings not renovated

Rusty Worley is someone else who'd like to see the building sold and renovated, too.

He's executive director of the Urban Districts Alliance. I like to think of him simply as “Mr. Downtown” because writing “Urban Districts Alliance” always makes me stop and wonder: How many Urban Districts did we have before the Alliance?

Worley has been wanting something to happen for some time. He has worked in downtown Springfield 18 years. During that entire stretch, the Newberry Building has been vacant.

“It is one of a handful of major buildings that have not been renovated downtown,” Worley says.

For the record: when Worley says “downtown” he means parts of Springfield from Campbell to Jefferson and from Olive to McDaniel.

The structure has seen occasional, temporary use every decade as a site for Census workers and for an occasional fund-raiser.

A whole-lotta-building you can't see

The boarded-up opening visible from the Square is like seeing the periscope of a submarine; it belies the actual size of what you can't view.

You almost have to look at the Newberry building from the air to get an idea of how massive it is.

It's two stories — a total of 42,000 square feet that are on a ground level with a high ceiling and a basement with a lower ceiling.

A developer could use historic tax credits to renovate the structure, Worley says.

“It certainly has a lot of character to it,” he adds.

But the sooner the renovation the better, Worley says. It's been vacant a long time, and the roof is showing its age.

Newberry's expanded by buying movie theater

When J. J. Newberry's opened in Springfield on the square, it originally faced only east. Next to it, at the time, was a building at the corner facing north; it was the Mozark Theatre. It opened in 1910 as the Grand Theater, for silent movies.

In 1930 it was closed for five months, re-wired for talkies and re-opened in September the same year as the New Iris Theatre.

It became the Mozark in 1933 and closed in 1950, when the building and its nearby parking lot were purchased by J. J. Newberry. The company expanded its under-roof space all the way to the intersection of S. Patton Avenue and West McDaniel Street.

Bass Pro owned it some 30 years

As I said, the department store closed Dec. 24, 1976.

In 1981, Sarah Overstreet, then the News-Leader columnist, remembered Newberry's with nostalgia.

“Looking in Newberry's windows between the imprint of fingers raked through years of dust, you can still see the wooden display case from which Springfield children bought mothers 10-cent bottles of ‘Evening in Paris' perfume.”

At some point, the property was purchased by John Bumgarner, owner of Regency Motorcars, 601 E. Trafficway, who told the News-Leader he planned to operate a wholesale automobile parts business in the Newberry building called Midwest Auto Parts Distributing.

In 1986, Bass Pro Shops bought the property in foreclosure.

Blevins, the broker, says that to the best of his knowledge the building was used for storage by Bass Pro Shops and the Johnny Morris family. He said he was told Johnny Morris had a personal office in the building.

I tried to check that with Faith Bauer, spokesperson for Bass Pro Shops, but did not hear back by deadline.

Bass Pro owned the property for 30 years, occasionally opening it up for fundraisers and for U.S. Census workers, and sold it in 2016 to the Newberry Building Limited Liability Company, now Austin O'Reilly.

I'd like to give special thanks for the help I received on this column from John Sellars, Deputy Answer Man and executive director emeritus of the History Museum on the Square; Richard Crabtree, Murney Associates real estate agent and author of the Facebook page “Springfield, Missouri History Landmarks & Vintage Photography”; and to Connie Forbis Yen, director of the Greene County Archives and Records Center and author of the Facebook page “Connie Yen's Ozarks History Journal.”

This is Answer Man column No. 57.