WATERVILLE — City councilors on Tuesday voted 7-0 to declare an apartment building at 26 Gold St. dangerous and unsafe and ordered the owner to demolish it within 30 days or the city will raze it and bill the owner for the expense.
The apartment building, owned by Homeowners Preservation, LLC, has changed hands several times and has posed property maintenance issues for the city since 2002, according to Code Enforcement Officer Garth Collins.
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Collins told councilors that squatters have lived in the building, which is bedbug infested and has broken windows and rotted and unsafe decks. There is trash in and around the building, which also has a deteriorated roof whose shingles blow off it, he said. Collins said he went there recently but was loath to enter the building.
“The stench was so bad that I wasn’t going to go in,” he said.
The building, he said, is beyond repair. After someone started a fire inside in June, the Fire Department boarded it up.
“It’s a blight on the neighborhood,” Collins said. “It’s been a problem for all the neighbors down there.”
Councilor Karen Rancourt-Thomas, D-Ward 7, who represents the city’s South End, in which the building is located, said the building poses a health problem. It is so close to the road that children walking there are in danger, she said.
“Absolutely, this needs to come down,” she said.
She and Councilor Dana Bushee, D-Ward 6, thanked Collins for all the work he has done, wrangling with owners of the property and trying to get it demolished.
“You’ve done an amazing amount of work to get to this point, and I would hate for it to be prolonged any more,” Bushee said.
The cost to raze the building is probably $8,000 to $10,000, according to Collins.
The building owner was notified of Tuesday’s hearing, City Solicitor William Lee said.
Meanwhile, city officials said typically a bank owns the building and as soon as city officials contact the bank to complain of property maintenance issues, that bank sells it to another one.
Mayor Karen Heck blasted the banks for that practice.
“Banks are getting away with murder in this town,” she said. “They’ve done it to a number of residences, and it’s disgusting.”
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17
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