Five Cape Girardeau buildings set to be demolished

Five buildings on the City of Cape Girardeau's endangered buildings list are set to be demolished in the coming months.

The addresses are: 535 S. Benton St.; 16 Henderson Ave.; 1010 Jefferson Ave.; 1220 S. Pacific St.; 543 S. Pacific St.

Four of the buildings were condemned in 2021 and 543 S. Pacific St. required an emergency declaration for demolition April 13, according to Ryan Shrimplin, Cape Girardeau city planner.

"We opened a condemnation on April 13 of this year, so very recently. There are provisions in the dangerous buildings code ordinance that allows us to make an emergency declaration and that's what we did in this case," Shrimplin said.

"We contacted Steve Southern, who is the building supervisor that we are under contract with, and he issued authorization to proceed straight to demolition because of the emergency clause."

The structure at 535 S. Benton St. in Cape Girardeau is to be demolished in the coming months.Submitted

The emergency clause was used because the structure's roof and wall were collapsing and deemed as a major structural failure. All structures are vacant because of condemnation or fire damage.

A proposal to use American Rescue Plan funds in dealing with endangered buildings was announced in April and will be presented to the Cape Girardeau City Council. If the proposal is approved, $125,000 from the American Rescue Plan will be used in order for the city to increase the number of buildings demolished each year. Currently the number of structures demolished in Cape Girardeau per year ranges from three to five.

Two companies provided the lowest bids for demolition of the houses. The house at 535 S. Benton St. will be demolished by Ronald Kucera Jr. and the four other structures will be demolished by Steve's Hauling and Excavating LLC.

The structure at 1220 S. Pacific St. in Cape Girardeau is to be demolished in the coming months.Submitted

Shrimplin said City of Cape Girardeau staff members are currently in the process of executing a task order with Koehler Engineering and Land Surveying Inc. to demolish the former Broadway Theatre building located at 805 Broadway in Cape Girardeau.

"Koehler has given us a proposal, we prepared the task order," he said, "I've given it to the city manager's office for the city manager's signature and once I receive that I will send it over to Koehler and they will be given the notice to proceed to prepare the plans and specifications for the demo, which will take probably a minimum of 30 days and may take longer. Part of that scope includes getting an engineer's estimate for the cost to demolish the structure."

According to a previous Southeast Missourian article, the city plans on demolishing more condemned buildings as a safety initiative to reduce crime and allow for city development.