city to take control and create and publish a request for proposals for the structure. Attorneys for both the building owner and the city drafted the RFP. The RFP specified that no city assistance would be provided and $1,000,000 in assistance previously promised to prospective developers by the property owner would not now be available. All responses to the RFP were rejected and the project and several million dollars in public assistance and unspecified incentives provided by the property owner were made available to Greg Gibson, who did not present a proposal in response to the RFP. When Kevin Burke was elected mayor of Terre Haute in 2003, he promised to decide the issue once and for all — Burke's campaign platform had included tearing down the Terre Haute House from the early days of his mayoral run. Once elected, Burke's administration obtained an option to purchase the property from the Hulman family in October 2004. In January 2005, the city's Department of Redevelopment put out a request for proposals for rehabilitating the old hotel and other historic buildings on the property or redeveloping the site. On May 25, 2005, the committee overseeing the process announced that none of the four rehab proposals met the city's stated financial criteria and thus the project was back at square one once again. The city's purchase option expired the following month, leaving the hotel's future once again in limbo. 2005 to present Proposal for demolition In September 2005, the Terre Haute Tribune-Star newspaper reported that an agreement had been reached between a new local limited liability corporation, Seventh & Wabash, LLC, and Terre Haute Realty Corporation (the Hulman family's real-estate holding company, which managed the Terre Haute House and several of the family's other properties). Seventh & Wabash, owned by local businessman Greg Gibson, would purchase the Terre Haute House, the Bement-Rea Building, and the former Fort Harrison Savings & Loan (the buildings were all on the same block). No sale price was immediately announced, leading some to wonder how much the Hulman family stood to make from the deal. Rumors began to swirl following the sale announcement that all three buildings would be demolished; this news did not encourage local residents who had hoped to someday see the hotel and neighboring buildings returned to their former splendor. Fred Nation, a spokesman for the Hulman family, initially denied reports that the Terre Haute