By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The City of Port Angeles has moved to condemn a high-profile brick building downtown and intends to take possession of it through the courts as a public safety measure.
The property, located at 204 E. Front Street at the intersection with Lincoln Street, has been the site of persistent nuisance, fire, and maintenance code violations since 2011, and was most recently the scene of a fire started by people squatting inside.
On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to ratify the City Manager’s Declaration of Emergency and Order for Emergency Abatement, and ordered staff to file a petition in Superior Court to initiate the condemnation proceedings.
The City has for 11 years had repeated contacts with owner David Gladwin over his failure to prevent people from breaking in, using drugs and creating a dangerous nuisance, but nothing has changed.
Now the City intends to take possession of the property after determining in court the fair market value. Here’s City Attorney Bill Bloor.
“As part of the law, the City does have to pay the fair market value. Now, the fair market value of the building, of course, takes into consideration its condition. That’s why we are having an engineer come in to look at it. We’re preparing to present evidence to the court, if it’s necessary, about the condition of the building and how that would affect the fair market value.”
Once acquired, the City’s plan is to pay a contractor to permanently seal the building until they decide what to do with it. Options include tearing it down or renovating it, though it’s currently in a state of such disrepair that it poses a threat of structural failure.
Councilors made a point to openly discuss the issue of property rights and their reluctance to take over the property. We’ll hear from Councilors Sugg, French and Mayor Dexter.
“And this is a tough decision because, you know, it is a personal property issue and doing it this way is not the ideal route. But there are safety and health issues that are impacting our community, and we can’t ignore that.” “If we haven’t been patient with regards to this private property owner’s rights, I don’t know, you know, what that would look like. So, I’m certainly going to support all of this. This has been something that we’ve all known has been overdue for a long time.” “Certainly, for those of us who ran for Council last summer, I think this building came up in almost every single forum that we had. And so, I think there is generally community will for this to be happening as well. So I will be supporting the motion.”
All costs associated with acquiring the property through condemnation proceedings will be paid from the Code Compliance fund.