The obscuring glass blocks wrapping around The Times office building at 110 W. Jefferson St. in downtown Ottawa will be no more after CL Real Estate completes renovations on the building.

The Times, which is a Shaw Local News Network newspaper, no longer owns the building, but its operations will remain in one half while another business occupies the other half.

Project Manager Brian Breslin delivered a proposal Thursday to the city’s Historical Preservation Commission to remove the glass block around the building and to have it replaced with windows everywhere except in the area surrounding the front door. The glass block will remain there.

Breslin said there’s a nine-week lead on glass so the project will have to wait to start until the spring, as he doesn’t want to have open windows in the middle of winter.

Commissioner Earle Lecki said the worst thing that can happen to historic buildings is obsolescence. He cited a study about the health and wellness of workers who work indoors without attachment to the outside.

“It’s appropriate for them to want windows in here so you can see out,” Lecki said. “I think they’re preserving the visual of the architecture and the entrance.”

The Times building was constructed in 1939 and is considered an example of Art Deco architecture.

The commission gave the renovation its stamp of approval.

CL Real Estate also presented plans for the facades of the buildings that occupy 815-817 Columbus St., which will be renamed the Stone Mason Building and feature five upscale one-bedroom apartments and a courtyard.

In another matter, Commissioner Charles Stanley asked if the panel would be interested in creating a sign commemorating the time Mark Twain spoke at the First United Methodist Church.

Members of the commission said they would be in contact with the church to discuss having a historical marker made.

Stanley said Twain was on a speaking tour at the time and Ottawa was one of eight stops made in 1869.

“He wrote his wife a letter about it, too,” Stanley said. “He got here and it was winter and people were kind of straggling in but the guy who was running the program right at the time it was supposed to start asked him to wait for people to come in.”

United Methodist Church, located at 100 Jefferson St., was just three years old at the time.