Hillsboro Safety and Service Director Dick Donley said that following a review hearing Wednesday morning in Hillsboro Municipal Court, he has scheduled a meeting for Friday at 2:30 p.m. with the owners of three West Main Street buildings to bring to a resolution their final dispositions.
The buildings were deemed uninhabitable on April 15 by former Hillsboro Building Inspector Anton Weissmann.
The meeting is a result of continued consternation on the part of municipal court judge David McKenna stemming from legal issues in light of the collapse of one of the buildings on June 3 that was owned by J. Steven Fettro.
Donley indicated that the properties have been put into “receivership,” which he said means the “city can move forward.” He said he has beein in contact with all of the property owners.
He said that once a decision is made on demolition, it will be the responsibility of the owners to clean up the debris.
“One of the contractors is coming in to look at the buildings and possibly put in a bid,” Donley said. “One of the other owners said he had a couple of contractors that might be interested, so I told him to invite them to do a survey of the situation.”
Donley said his intention is to “get things moving along the best we can” and that in his opinion, employing one contractor to demolish all three buildings would be in the best interest of the owners and would be a cost savings to them as well.
“The contractor who is doing the demolition says it’ll be cheaper if one guy does them all,” Donley said.
The buildings set to be demolished, according to Donley, are the former Slo ‘n Low restaurant building, an adjacent structure owned by Helen Walton and Joe Mahan, and the Fettro building, which has already partially collapsed.
According to Hillsboro Law Director Fred Beery, Fettro received an initial proposal that the three buildings at 119, 117 and 115 W. Main St. would be taken down by a single demolition contractor.
Complicating matters is the construction of one of the buildings — the former restaurant structure at 119 W. Main St. — which Donley said is not a stand-alone building.
“Back in the early days, that was a place where they did leather works,” he said. “There was a vacant area in there, and sometime in later years someone just put a roof on it and attached ceilings to the walls of the buildings standing beside it, so it has no stand-alone wall.”
He said that when the middle building at 117 W. Main St. is demolished, the restaurant structure will come down automatically.
Donley said he’s optimistic everything will come together on Friday in light of conversations he has had with the property owners.
“We’re going to get something done one way or the other since I’ve talked with all the owners, and we all just need to get together and make an agreement,” Donley said. “We need to expedite things here and get that place cleaned up before the weather changes.”
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
