Renovated Scully Building will create new memories

By Mike Fak

[August 07, 2008]  I remember clearly two decades ago taking our son to the Scully Building. There was a bit of a step to get in the front door that led to Abe's Carmel Corn at the time. Timothy always gleefully managed to make the hop, holding on to either Mom or Dad's hand. Inside, he would get down on his knees with a paper sack and move along the aisles of bulk candy with the same enthusiasm a prospector would have who just found gold everywhere he looked.

I remember walking the downtown with friends and family from Chicagoland and always hearing their remarks of how interesting and unique the Scully Building looked when compared to so many other more modern, mundane structures in their own neighborhoods.

With a laugh I recall the old Continental Cablevision offices, in the side wing of the old building, where Jim Ash and I did the Channel 15 television show -- often with multiple wastebaskets and plastic tarp draped over the electronics when it rained outside.

I remember the cold January night of the fire that gutted the venerable old building. I recall as I stamped my cold feet against the street that I felt I was seeing an icon of Lincoln's historic structures being destroyed in a torrent of water dousing callous and uncaring flames.

The concerns for the building have been numerous these past few years. From an eyesore in a rejuvenated downtown to a possible danger, talk has always been negative about what should be done with the Scully Building. Rarely did those conversations include restoration. It seemed that hopes for the building becoming again what it once was had been extinguished along with those last hot embers on a cold January morning.

Now, thanks to Patrick and April Doolin, those hopes that were snuffed out for many of us can be rekindled.

The Scully Building will once again have its doors open to the public, awaiting new residents to share and build new memories.

It is a great day for downtown Lincoln. It is a great day for Lincoln. It is a great day for beginning new memories. And after all, that is what life is, an album of memories. The Scully Building deserves to be included in them. And now it will be.

[By MIKE FAK]