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Salem Health executives demolished all of the buildings that once made up the Oregon School for the Blind … except one.

Now they want to demolish Howard Hall too, to accommodate a $20 million expansion of their neighboring campus.

However, they have tried to demolish the building before. They were denied by the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission two years ago, when they sought to use part of the old campus for a parking lot. Howard Hall is historically significant and therefore protected, Salem senior historic planner Kimberli Fitzgerald said.

Yet hospital officials are trying again. Fitzgerald said they recently contacted her to get on the Historic Landmarks Commission’s September agenda. To destroy the building, she said, they will have to go through the same process where they were stymied in February 2011.

The result might be the same, she added.

“We have a very strict code in this city when it comes to historic preservation,” Fitzgerald said.

Residents in the area are happy about that, said Victor Dodier, president of the South Central Association of Neighbors. They’re upset with how Salem Health has seemingly run roughshod over the historic neighborhood, he said.

The former Oregon School for the Blind was designated as a historic area. However, Dodier said, of the buildings, only 90-year-old Howard Hall was specifically protected by the Historic Landmarks Commission in 1990.

“Being strict readers of the historic preservation laws, hospital administrators tore down everything else except that one building,” Dodier said. “Needless to say, neighbors are not happy.”

Hospital officials demolished the school’s playground and its other buildings, throwing a chain-link fence around the entire facility.

They’re not talking about their latest proposal for the campus. Sherryll Hoar, the hospital’s public and government affairs administrator, said she is not making public statements about the development until discussions have progressed with some of the stakeholders involved.

Some details, however, are available. Hospital officials have already gone on record saying they want to borrow $20 million in tax-free bonds to finance capital projects. Those projects include a $10 million outpatient rehabilitation center and a $2.8 million parking structure on the former Oregon School for the Blind campus.

When hospital officials do open their mouths about the project, Dodier said they had better be prepared to do some fast talking. They do not have a good relationship with the neighborhood, he said, especially after their failed attempt to demolish Howard Hall two years ago.

“Neighbors were very much concerned about the historic buildings that were on the campus,” he said. “I at least thought this issue had been somewhat resolved two years ago. Apparently not.”

The Oregon School for the Blind opened in 1873 on eight acres slightly north of Mission Street and south of Pringle Park at the request of Nellie Simpson, a young blind woman. The Legislature originally spent $4,000 on the school. Land was later donated in 1881 by former Portland Mayor Henry Failing.

Howard Hall was built as a boys dormitory. Members of the Historic Landmarks Commission stated in 2011 that the building is notable for its historic facade facing Mission Street.

The 2009 Legislature cut funding for the school and put the property up for sale the following year; Salem Health purchased it for $6 million. Legal attempts by Failing’s heirs and other critics of sale were settled when the 2010 Legislature passed a law giving half of the proceeds from the sale to educate blind students and the other half to upgrade the Oregon School for the Deaf.

At a public hearing scheduled for May 28, Salem City Council will take public comments on the proposed bond issuance. Councilors may take formal action following the hearing.