Hall just seems oddly unloved

SALT LAKE CITY — The fate of Odd Fellows Hall is on the line today — again.

This is the building that will not die. It is situated on Market Street in downtown Salt Lake City, just a few steps west of Main Street, where somehow, someway, it has lasted ever since a craftsman whose name is lost to history etched the numbers "1891" just above the 3rd story portico.

For 119 years, then, Odd Fellows Hall — the original headquarters of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows — has stood the tests of time, change and more time. The building is older than the state.

And today might be your last chance to buy it.

The current owner, namely the United States government, has no more use for it than it has for, say, the nuclear waste business and has put the building up for public auction.

The bidding opened at $500,000 and as of press time Tuesday night, the high bid was $570,000. At 1 p.m. today a 24-hour "survival period" will begin. If the high bid survives, by 1 p.m. Thursday the old hall will have a new owner. (To see where the bidding stands instantaneously, check it out online at www.auctionrp.com.)

The price range of well below $1 million is decidedly on the low side, considering the government just paid $7 million to move the building, which weighs 5 million pounds, across Market Street. And it's estimated it will take almost that much again to bring the building up to code.

And you thought you were upside-down in your last house.

The government acquired the property several years ago when plans were drawn up to expand the Frank E. Moss United States Courthouse.

The Odd Fellows building was smack in the middle of the plans.

They might have bulldozed it like the rest of the buildings on the block, but the hall made it onto the National Register of Historic Places.

With fierce backing by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, it became the spotted owl of the courthouse expansion project.

An impasse was averted with the decision to move the building across Market Street.

Anyway, here's what you get: