Making a really tough call
I made a bad joke last week when I learned where the fate of the old Jamison Block building would be decided.
“Gee, are you expecting that much trouble?” I asked Peter McInerney, community development director for the City of Wayne, after he told me the building would come before the Dangerous Building Appeals Board in a hearing at police headquarters.
He wasn’t, of course, but the city hall meeting room was occupied that night by the Wayne Planning Commission and, even though it was scheduled to start an hour later than the appeals board, there was no telling how long the dangerous building procedure would last.
The issues around the building – which is on Michigan Avenue, between the Historic Wayne Theater and the Village Pub – have certainly lingered longer than anyone thought they would. Vacant for more than 10 years now, the aging structure has fallen to such a state of disrepair that it’s unlikely that it can even be fixed up.
That’s the opinion of city inspectors and officials, at least; they cited it through the Dangerous Building ordinance last April and have since determined it is a public hazard and should be torn down. That order probably should have been imposed when the building went to the appeals board last year, but they gave the owners – Grizel Butler and her husband, Floyd Andrews – another 60 days to come up with some detailed construction drawings outlining how the building would be restored and a financing plan – or at least a letter of intent from a bank that said financial backing for the project would be there.
They didn’t get either.
City officials probably didn’t expect trouble last week, but they most likely expected some tension and there was plenty of that. On one side of the room, City Attorney Dick Clark, McInerney, city engineer and chief building official Ramzi El-Gharib and city inspector Keith Montressor pleaded their case – mostly through Clark.
On the other, Butler, structural engineer Wayne Titus and architect Elton Anderson said they still believed the building could be saved.
They’re probably right, too. In the end, you can do just about anything with a building no matter what shape it’s in if you have enough money to throw at it. That was the largest lingering concern from the city officials and members of the appeals board and in that, neither side was flexible.
Butler maintained that the financing was available, but the bank wanted the structure removed from the dangerous building list before they would give out a detailed financing plan. The city said a detailed financial plan was necessary to forestall demolition. Clark said the city couldn’t just remove the building from the list since they had spent the last eight months showing why it belonged there.
I admit I have a soft spot for Butler, soft-spoken yet insistent, and the building itself, which is one of my favorites along Michigan Avenue. I look at it and see the same potential she does, but I’ve never been inside it to poke around, either, the way city inspectors have. I felt compassion, too, because this building is probably a large part of her life – maybe even her biggest investment – and to see the city so implacably order it demolished must be, well, disheartening at best.
Will it stay or will it go? Nobody knows, really.
Here’s a piece of advice, though, for landlords or property owners that have at the back of their brain the fear that one day the government will come knocking and want to tear down their pride and joy: don’t let it come to that.
It’s a relatively easy thing to do, actually. You just take care of your property. Fix something when it goes wrong. Paint something when it starts to peel. Market it when it’s empty. Sell it to someone who can afford to take care of it if you cannot—before it becomes economically troublesome and your alternatives run out.
Members of the appeals board said after they made their decision last week that it had been a tough case. Maybe that’s true, maybe that was just lip service designed to make Butler and company feel better, who knows. All I know is that city officials would rather not have to resort to such tactics; they’d rather everyone kept up their property. It’s cheaper for everyone, it’s less contentious and it lets them concentrate on things they should concentrate on. Unfortunately, that’s not always in their control.