A building on Lawrence Avenue caused disagreement during Monday’s borough agenda meeting.
The building in question is on 509 Lawrence Ave., which the borough owns. The building used to house the Ellwood City Newsstand and has been deemed unfeasible for repair.
Since the building can’t easily be put to use, President Connie MacDonald felt the building should be torn down. At best, a developer may buy it and at worse, it can be used as a parking lot.
Vice President David DeCaria disagreed and backed himself with advice from Town Center Associates, a Beaver-based consulting firm advising Ellwood City on revitalizing its downtown.
“Town Center has told us over and over again to quit tearing down buildings,” DeCaria said. “They’ve warned about the missing tooth affect.”
DeCaria said that the building has been declared unfeasible to repair but not unstable and thus isn’t in danger of collapsing. He also estimated the cost in tearing down the building to be in excess of $100,000 and that the lot will be too small for parking.
“The building isn’t hurting anything,” DeCaria said. “We can build up around it.”
This has already happened to an extend. Across the street, an old building was torn down to create the Community Plaza and Venezie Sporting Goods and Apparel opened in the City Center Place.
According to DeCaria, as the downtown becomes more aesthetically appealing, prospective business owners are more likely to revamp a decrepit building as opposed to building a new building in an empty lot.
For now, the fate of the building remains undetermined.
Jonathan Cortez/EllwoodCity.org
In order to use the 2nd and 3rd floor you would need to install and elevator per Ellwood city codes. Nobody is going to renovate when you look at the cost of what that would cost, however I can give you an idea as we have tried to purchase buildings and already have, you will run into this. That leaves the 1st floor as the only floor that can be occupied thus it is already ADA certified. Therefore it’s easier to build a new building, even if the elevator is included with new building Bc it costs way less to construct than to renovate a building by trying to put in a elevator. Why are we worrie about tearing down buildings now? We already started? Sweet plaza we have that brings nothing to town the 3 months it’s in use. There is way too much free parking around the town now, nobody is going to use that parking lot or pay for a permit to park there. Tear it down it’s a horrible eye sight anyways and stones on the ground would look better.