Shenanigans on the Boulevard

by Dennis Evanosky

The Metro forced an open process in the Roberts' Tires-Laurel Liquors demolition. By the time you read this, the Roberts family will have cleared the site. Originally, the buildings would have come down at the beginning of June, but without the appropriate permit.

So, what was the reason for the delay?

City officials learned the Metro was going to run a story about the way the Roberts family (with the city's blessing) planned to demolish the buildings at MacArthur Boulevard and High Street. As I discussed in my last column, the city issued the Roberts family an over-the-counter demolition permit. This permit would have allowed the family to take down all the buildings on the site without posting one iota of public notice.

The reason the city gave for allowing the over-the-counter permit was almost comical. Councilmember Dick Spees told me that Calvin Wong, the city official responsible for issuing the "permit," said that was important because the buildings were substandard.

I asked Spees if a property owner should be permitted simply to allow buildings to go to seed, apply for an over-the-counter demolition permit (after all, the building are substandard), and tear down the mess with no public notice. Spees agreed that this should not be the case.

An over-the-counter demolition permit is meant for a property owner with a small outbuilding in a backyard. A property owner with property in the public right-of-way should not be issued such a permit.

Would top city officials really go along with the over-the-counter demolition permit? The answer came a week later. I passed by Laurel Liquors and was delighted to see "An Application for a Permit to Demolish A Commercial Building" posted on the site. This way, it's done in the open, with the public's knowledge and with the proper permit.

Neighbors on Maybelle are concerned about the proliferation of five-, seven-, ten-, and even twelve-unit apartment buildings on their street. There are two concerns. Some building is going on, and other construction has been halted and is going to seed. On the surface, it appears that some units are going up without permits (or at least without the property owners posting any). Neighbors there are working with the city, hoping for a moratorium on new building construction.

Often all it takes is letting the city know about inappropriate activities, and miraculously, those activities get the attention they deserve.