The city of Ann Arbor is moving ahead with demolition of six boarded-up houses along North Main Street using money from its dangerous building fund after losing state grant funding.
City Administrator Steve Powers informed City Council members of the decision in an email Monday afternoon, saying the demolition and restoration of the site will take nine weeks and a notice to proceed will be issued to the city's demolition contractor this week.
"The schedule accounts for the sequencing of tasks that have to be completed before demolition of the structures can begin," Powers wrote in the email. "Asbestos abatement and demolition notifications to MDEQ each have 10-working-days notification requirement. There is a likelihood that we may be able to complete this work in less than nine weeks."
Cars drive past the houses on North Main last month after they were supposed to be demolished.
Ryan J. Stanton | AnnArbor.com
The city has determined state funding is unavailable at this time, Powers said, but the city will try to recoup its costs by placing liens on the properties for the cost of the demolition.
The city had been awarded a $96,000 grant from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority in September but failed to complete the demolition by a March 15 deadline and lost the money.
Asked recently why the city's acceptance of the grant didn't go to the City Council for approval until mid-February when the deadline was less than a month away, Powers said the grant was not accepted until the city received technical assistance from MSHDA.
He said the assistance was requested in December and received mid-February, and by then it turned out to be too late to execute the demolition by March 15.
Mayor John Hieftje relayed concerns from city staff members last month, saying the city was having a hard time getting ahold of MSHDA and that was the reason for the delay and missed deadline.
MSDHA spokeswoman Katie Bach relayed a somewhat different story last month, saying the agency worked hard to cooperate with the city on the issue.
"The problem is the city didn’t make it a priority to demolish the homes in the 700 block of North Main until eight weeks before the grant was set to expire and there were issues with those demos because they were part of a failed development project, which had nothing to do with MSHDA," she said. "Ann Arbor was trying to fix failed federal HOME-funded development properties by using NSP1 money."
Powers said he is authorizing the demolition of the houses on the 700 block of North Main because of their location on a main gateway into the city, the length of time the houses have been abandoned, and the severity of their decay.
The City Council has established a process to demolish dangerous buildings. In January, the city's Building Board of Appeals deemed the houses dangerous.
The property owners' consent was received in January.
The city has demolition contractors pre-selected and on standby. The contractor that is available to proceed and provides an acceptable bid will be selected, Powers said.
The houses originally were supposed to be demolished to make way for a $15 million affordable housing project called Near North, a project that is now dead due to financing troubles.
A spokesperson for Avalon Housing, one of the partners on the project, said in September 2011 the houses would be demolished soon. Months dragged on and that never happened.
Ann Arbor officials pledged last August to have the houses demolished within 45 to 60 days. Less than a month later, the development team announced the Near North project was dead.
In all, there are eight boarded-up houses from 626-724 N. Main that are owned by a limited partnership between Three Oaks Group and Avalon Housing.
The city has declared six of the eight houses dangerous buildings. That means the two southernmost houses will remain standing.
City officials said the property owners have waived all proceedings and admitted the buildings are dangerous, but they're uncertain if Three Oaks and Avalon are completely walking away from the property or what the plans are for the two houses that will remain standing.
Ryan J. Stanton covers government and politics for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529. You also can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's email newsletters.