Preservationists get reprieve A trial Jan. 24 will decide fate of historic buildings on Broad St.

HARRISBURG — A Commonwealth Court judge yesterday ordered the state to keep its hands off two historic North Broad Street buildings until a full trial later this month determines whether the state Department of General Services is obliged to honor a preservation agreement signed by the Convention Center and the state historical commission.

After listening to legal arguments for much of the day, Judge Keith B. Quigley delayed a final verdict on the buildings' fate and instead requested a full-blown trial, complete with witnesses and cross-examination. At the request of the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, which is leading the fight to save the buildings, Quigley agreed to extend the existing injunction against further demolition until after the trial, scheduled to start Jan. 24.

"I'm delighted," said John Gallery, Preservation Alliance director, as he left the courtroom. "We got exactly what we asked for."

None of five attorneys representing the Department of General Services and the Convention Center Authority would comment on Quigley's decision.

The battle to save the two linked buildings - a narrow neoclassical office and its modernist sidekick standing in the path of the Convention Center's expansion - has ballooned in the last month from a simple preservation battle into a more far-reaching and philosophical debate. At issue is whether one state agency must honor agreements made by another.

The state Historical and Museum Commission and the Convention Center Authority signed an agreement in 2004 pledging to retain a group of commercial buildings on Broad Street just north of City Hall, and to incorporate them in the center's expanded facade. Philadelphia's preservationists willingly sacrificed several other historic buildings in the expansion zone.

But this fall, DGS declared that the 2004 contract was meaningless because it, and not the Convention Center Authority, is the agency responsible for the constructing the center's expansion. Crews began demolishing the two protected buildings without warning the Saturday before Christmas.

Gallery said the state's credibility to negotiate contracts is now a big issue. "We, as citizens, expect that a government agency that enters into an agreement will honor it," he said yesterday.