ANTIGO, Wis. (WSAW) – The city of Antigo said it knew the building that collapsed three weeks ago on the corner of 5th Avenue and Superior Street had structural issues and was working with the prior and current owner. Work to fix it, although it came too late.
“The decay was worse than probably everyone knew,” Former Zoning Administrator and Building Inspector Beth McCarthy said Monday.
“Well, it’s a little bit of a surprise to see the back end of the building certainly peel off,” Mayor Terry Brand expressed. “It’s the result of too many years of not enforcing building code, and people not taking care of their roofs and moisture gets down into the walls, and they freeze and crack, and then we have a problem.”
The building is privately owned. Mayor Brand said the city never owned the property, but the city was not holding owners to necessary maintenance either. The city has ordinances related to the upkeep of residentially zoned properties, but McCarthy stated, “We had nothing specific to commercial buildings.”
“We had started an effort to make sure that all the vacant buildings that were being warehoused or had just storage and not active retail, that they either had to apply for a conditional use (permit), or discontinue warehousing in those buildings to try to generate some change-of-hands and maybe get some businesses becoming operational in those buildings,” she explained.
In August, the city passed an ordinance, “to prevent things like this from happening, so people maintain their buildings to the level that keeps them safe, and prevents them from deteriorating, and eventually having things have to be razed,” she continued.
She explained they had spoken with the previous owner about what would be needed to get the building up to code and how much that would cost. That owner sold it soon after the passed ordinance. McCarthy said the new owner knew what needed to be done and they were working with him; then the wall crumbled.
While 7 Investigates is waiting for the city to process a records request for building inspections and related records to this building, McCarthy and Brand said the owner expressed an interest in having tenants above the retail space and having a retail business below. They explained at some point, that changed and the owner wanted to renovate and host a church in the space. McCarthy told the owner that the building was not zoned for a church gathering space and, for various reasons, was not eligible to be rezoned to become a space for gatherings.
7 Investigates reached out to the owner, but all of the numbers we found were either disconnected or did not work.
The city tried to contact the owner several times as the wall crumbled, including calling the police in Sheboygan, where the owner lives, to get the message to him. Mayor Brand said they have not formally communicated with him since this incident except that the owner told the city it would be handling communication through an attorney. That attorney has not communicated with the city and the city is unaware of which law firm is representing the owner.
The city hired a structural engineer to evaluate the building. He used the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office’s drone to inspect the roof and other elements of the building, determining that it needed to be razed. He told 7 Investigates that his report for this evaluation will be completed this week. The demolition took about eight days to complete.
Abating asbestos
While the demolition happened soon after the wall began to crumble, there are still several checks and protocols that must be followed to raze the building safely. That includes testing for and abatement asbestos. The city filed a notification with the Department of Natural Resources.
McCarthy expressed gratitude for NorthStar Environmental Testing’s quick services to address this urgent need. This building, like many of the city’s buildings downtown, was built more than 100 years ago, so they assumed there would be hazardous substances in the building materials.
“They presume there would be some asbestos present. And that’s our role is to help guide them through that,” David Barrett, the company’s owner and senior project manager told 7 Investigates.
While NorthStar tests and abates asbestos regularly, it is usually planned and happens in buildings that are more structurally sound. Barrett said having the wall partially collapsed made testing difficult. They had to wait for the structural engineer to determine where NorthStar’s team could safely go in the building. They were allowed on the upper floors and did not find any asbestos.
“We knew that there was some asbestos in the basement, though, and so that got handled differently.”
Prior knowledge of building materials used in basements of buildings this old told them that, not tests. They presumed there was friable asbestos, which is defined as material that can be turned to dust with hand pressure. That dust is what people can breathe and is known to cause cancer. To mitigate that concern, city crews hosed down the building as it was being demolished so any asbestos would be too wet to become dangerous dust.
“As they pulled that structure apart, we were looking for other materials that might be suspected asbestos,” Barrett explained. “If we would have found it, we would have stopped them, sampled it, waited for results, and then moved on accordingly.”
While much of the building debris was able to be disposed of in the city’s landfill, the basement material with asbestos was taken to the Marathon County Solid Waste Department, which can properly dispose of asbestos material.
An expensive endeavor
Barrett noted the cost for their services alone for the eight days they were on site would not be small. Add in the hours and resources for police, fire, public works, engineers, and others and the bill is climbing in at least the five-figure range. Mayor Brand said that bill is still be calculated.
While the city will take on that cost initially, it will bill the owner or his insurance if he has coverage.
“If he doesn’t pay the bill by November, it’ll go on his property taxes,” Mayor Brand explained. “In a lot of cases, then the owner doesn’t pay the property tax. And after three years, the county gets the property on tax aversion. And then if they sell it, we’ll get the proceeds from that.”
As for what will happen to the space in the meantime, Mayor Brand said he is not sure. That is up to the owner, although I have mentioned the building will never be the same. Mayor Brand said the Department of Transportation would not let another building be built that close to the highway (Superior Street), so the footprint would be smaller and other regulations would have to be followed restricting what could be built and how it could be built.
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