Galesburg to demolish 6 abandoned buildings, will address Broadview at March 21 meeting

GALESBURG — Chris Cozad has spent the past four years witnessing her neighbor’s property sink into disrepair. Though she worries that the critters inside will come running toward her place, she still thinks the abandoned apartment building at 1470 Grand Ave. is an eyesore that would be better off demolished.

“The different ones that have lived there have told me about the cockroaches and the mice and the bedbugs and all the different stuff over there and I'm so afraid that when they do tear it down it's all going to come over this way,” Cozad said. “But no, I think it would be great if it was just torn down.”

The building is one of six different properties that Galesburg City Council approved taking the initial steps toward demolition at a March 7 meeting. Mayor Peter Schwartzman said that these properties are just the latest batch in an ongoing effort to clear up damaged and dilapidated buildings around the city.

“Several years ago — we as a council, and I was on the council — we heard enough from the community that we needed to really step up our game and clean up neighborhoods and abandoned buildings,” Schwartzman said.

Steve Gugliotta, Galesburg’s Director of Community Development, said the city currently has bids out for the demolition of five other properties. There are also 10-11 other properties that the city is currently in the final stages of inspecting or preparing to put out demolition bids for sometime in the next two months.

Galesburg has had a demolition program in place since before Gugliotta started working for the city 22 years ago, but the community director said that around 2016-2017 the program did see a slow down in the number of buildings it was tearing down.

Gugliotta said the demolition rate has steadied since 2018, with anywhere from 6 to 15 abandoned city properties being demolished a year.

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'It's just been a zoo'

Cozad said that the four-unit apartment building next to her wasn’t always abandoned. She said she has seen tenants come and go, some of them making attempts to fix up the property. Two years ago, she donated extra shingles that she had in her garage to a person living at 1470 Grand Ave. to help them patch up the roof.

But outside of the tenants, Cozad said she has not seen the landlord make an attempt to fix up the apartment building. Cozad has now set up a private fence between her property and the apartment building and said she worries that the unkempt tree in the abandoned unit’s backyard might drop one of its large branches onto her yard.

“It’s just been a zoo,” Cozad said.

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According to the city’s report on the property, a letter was sent to the property owner and upon a follow-up inspection “it was noted that no attempt had been made at fixing the property.”

The report listed that there are openings around the collapsed porch that allow for rodent infestations, standing water in the basement, a missing rear window that exposes the interior of the building to weather and trespassers and various other plumbing, electrical and fire hazard violations.

Since Feb 2020, the property has been determined uninhabitable and has been brought to administrative adjudication 11 times for 43 different violations, resulting in $4,370 in unpaid fines and maintenance fees.

The other properties the council voted on Monday included residences at 782 and 770 E Berrien St., a residence and detached garage at 1290 Day St., a commercial structure at 2069 Windish Drive and another residence and detached garage at 946 S Pearl St.

Misty Bowman, who lives right next to 946 S Pearl St., said the abandoned house attracts stray animals. The city report shows that the property’s owner was contacted in April 2021 but that re-inspections done in May and Dec. 2021 showed no sign of repair.

"It attracts a lot of rodents and problems like possums and raccoons and stray cats and things, so yea it's definitely a problem," Bowman said. "It would be nice if it was demolished."

"It’s an eyesore,” Tammy Perez said, who has lived across from the Pearl St. address for over five years. “ I mean somebody comes and mows but nobody does anything else to it.”

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The lengthy process

Though last Monday’s city council vote brought these residences on an official track to be demolished, the city must go through a lengthy process before it can finally raze the buildings.

Gugliotta said from the time a problem-property is first identified by the city, to when bulldozers arrive, usually takes about two years.

This is because the city must notify the owners that they must repair their property and give them 15 days to respond or work out a timeline with the city to do so. If no owner is reached or the repairs are not completed, the property will then be presented to the city council with a summary of its issues.

Once voted on, a title search will then be conducted to try and discover any other interested parties. If these additional 15-day notices to other potential owners expire or elicit no responses, the city’s legal team will present evidence to county court that they have taken every step possible to contact the property owners, either through letters, notices in the newspaper, or serving them personally.

Court approval obtained, the city will then inspect the property for asbestos, contact Ameren to turn off the gas and electric, and send out the bids for demolition.

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The Broadview and others

Another building that has fallen and remained in disrepair is the former Broadview Inn on the Public Square on West Main Street. Mayor Schwartzman said the city council will assess the building at its next meeting on March 21.

"It's right on our public square and it's been in that dilapidated, unused state for more than a few years and it's about time something is done,” Schwartzman said. “I probably get more calls and complaints about that than almost anything else in the city at this point.”

Schwartzman said that when possible, the city would much rather prefer to rehabilitate dilapidated homes or prevent their slide into disrepair in the first place. But the time it takes for an uncared-for building to become uninhabitable can be quick.

“A building that looked reasonable one fall can look disastrous in the spring,” Schwartzman said. “We're certainly not going out and looking at buildings that look in good shape. We're looking at those that are showing signs of aging or dilapidation.”

The mayor noted that the process to get a building approved for demolition can be long, but it can also be costly.

March 7’s city council meeting also saw the council approve the purchase of 820 E Fifth St., the former Cottonwood Healthcare Center, for $28,355.91. Once the council has the deed in hand, it will inspect the inside of the building to determine if it is salvageable.

According to an internal estimation, the city report said that demolishing the property could cost $200,000 to $250,000.

Schwartzman identified multiple factors that could be contributing to the number of dilapidated or abandoned homes in Galesburg, including depopulation, an aging population, and the old age of homes that were built during the city’s “heyday.”

"It could be anything, it could be all those reasons," Gugliotta said. "Industry leaving, people no longer having the financial means to maintain their buildings could be a possibility."

"A lot of these that we come across are properties that maybe someone has passed away and there are no heirs available to maintain the building and the property has just sat there for years," Gugliotta said.

In the case of Cozad’s neighboring building, she said it would be nice if somebody purchased the dilapidated apartment, but that she would also be happy if it was just turned into an empty plot of land.

"Galesburg needs all the help it can get when it comes to new people coming here to live and things like that, that I don't think they need all those eye-sores here, there and wherever," Cozad said.

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Galesburg IL looks to demolish abandoned houses, address Broadview