Building owners on Fifth Avenue running into roadblocks as they try to demolish condemned properties
Imagine owning a building that has been condemned by the city that you have also paid thousands of dollars to demolish, only for the city to stop the demolition and then turn around and cite you for building and fire code violations.
That's what a Pittsburgh woman is claiming is happening to her and she's not alone.
Susan Monteverde inherited a building from her late father but not long after she became the owner, the city ordered her to tear it down. She wants to, but now, the city won't let her, saying the city won't give her a demolition permit.
In October, she applied to the city for a demolition permit and paid a demolition company $13,000, half of the cost to take the building down. The city won't give her the go-ahead and to add insult to injury, the city continues to issue citations for building and fire code violations that would be remedied by, you guessed it, demolition.
"The squatters keep breaking in, starting fires, and I keep getting violations," she said. "Things are falling off, you can see it's caving in."
Monteverde is not alone, she's one of a half-dozen building owners on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh's Uptown neighborhood going through the same struggle. Orbital Engineering owns a condemned building that has a crack running up the facade. Despite fears that it will fall on their employees' cars, Orbital has been trying unsuccessfully for more than a year to get a demolition permit. It turns out, the city has been honoring the wishes of community groups.
"I have formally opposed them because I believe this can be salvaged," said Brittany McDonald of Uptown Partners.
The Fifth Avenue corridor has a special zoning designation that requires community review on all new developments and the community development group, Uptown Partners, has opposed several demolitions.
Director Brittany McDonald said they're sick of buildings being taken down for surface parking for PPG Paints Arena. Without their approval, the city has delayed issuing permits, even to buildings in dire shape.
"At the end of the day, we don't want another parking lot or extension of a parking lot," she said.
Condemnation means the buildings are a nuisance and public danger, by not issuing permits, owners said the city is putting the public at risk.
As Monteverde seeks out permits, she said she's trying to foster the redevelopment Uptown Partners are looking for.
"I have a developer looking at it," she said. "They want to buy the whole block and put a development in there, so I want to knock it down because they're doing to have to knock it down anyway."
For now, the owners are stuck, continuing to rack up citations. For the past year, they've been ordered to appear before District Judge Oscar Pettite who has dismissed more than a dozen violations against the owners, saying the city can't withhold a demolition permit on one hand and cite the owners for violations on the other.
The city's Department of Permits and Licensing said it will continue to enforce building codes until all violations are addressed but will try to refrain from citing owners who have applied for demolition permits.
However, that has not been the case so far as owners continue to get cited and are stuck with dangerous buildings they can't take down.
