Unsafe buildings on South Pearl torn down
“Actively collapsing” structures were cited for code violations
Buildings on South Pearl Street were torn down Thursday in an emergency demolition by the city’s building department.
Two buildings, 397 and 399 S. Pearl St., were demolished while the back end of 395 S. Pearl St. was partially dismantled.
All three buildings, which were empty and deemed unsafe for at least six years if not over a decade, were “actively collapsing ” when the fire department conducted its regular vacant building inspections and called for the emergency demolition, building department director Richard Lajoy said.
Lajoy said all three building owners were currently facing prosecution for their “failure to maintain” their properties and a “slew of (building code) violations.”
“In the most recent violations where we requested engineers’ assessments of the buildings, at which point they would outline deficiencies and then the owner would have been obligated to remediate any of those deficiencies, we never received the reports,” he said.
The Times Union tried to contact the building owners for comment but was unable to reach them.
Lajoy said the city couldn’t ignore the situation. He and other department officials were at the site until about 10 p.m. Thursday until the demolition was completed.
In the middle of the demolition Thursday, he said one of the building owners showed up.
It wasn’t the previous owner that he had been corresponding with, but rather a new owner who said they bought the building and had plans to turn it into
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a commercial space for a business. Lajoy wasn’t aware that the previous owner had sold the building and said it “infuriated” him that the prior owner sold it to someone knowing it was a “problem.”
“It was very, very unfortunate,” he said.
Now that the buildings are gone, the city will remove the debris, backfill the land and bill the owners.
Lajoy said the total cost of the demolition was about $114,000. He doesn’t anticipate the owners will pay for the demolition and expects it will be levied on their tax bills while the city fronts the
bill and is later reimbursed by the county.
“They will move forward with the foreclosure process if the owners don’t pay the bill,” he noted.
Lajoy said the building department has done its part in doling out citations and fines and taking property owners to court to ensure they’re held accountable. He was communicating with the building owners for some time but said there weren’t any resolutions in court or otherwise.
“It’s up to the courts to really hold these folks accountable and force them to either maintain or sell the buildings if need be, but they need to be in the hands of responsible folks,” he said.