Inspectors use self-help approach

Downtown building owners and city officials met last week for a friendly talk about structural safety.

And to put everyone's mind at ease, officials got one thing out of the way quickly: Nobody's getting cited today.

"We weren't there to hand out copies of codes saying, 'This is what you have to follow or else,'" said inspections services director Tim Morgan.

Morgan said instead of handing out codes, he and fire chief Rick Ennis handed out a "self-survey" for owners to conduct a cursory inspection of their own buildings.

And just in case anybody was still worried, "we told them, 'we don't want to see your self-surveys back.' It's for your own information," Morgan said.

The survey asks owners to look for things like cracks or bulges in walls, sagging roofs, water in the basement and bowed or twisted support columns.

About 18 owners or representatives attended the Nov. 7 and 8 meetings.

And those present seemed to appreciate the self-help tack.

"I thought it was a real positive step. The city is trying to open lines of communication with building owners," said Dave Hutson, owner of Hutson's Fine Furniture at 43 S. Main St.

"In the past, some building owners were probably scared to go talk to the city."

Hutson said he takes building maintenance seriously at the store location his family has owned since the early 1950s.

"Here's an example. You need to keep an eye on a roof leak," he said. "At first it's not bad, so you let it go, but eventually it will deteriorate into something a lot worse."

The impetus behind the meetings came from recent high-profile collapses.

In May, a 95-year-old apartment building in the 100 block of North Ellis Street in Cape Girardeau collapsed. Debris from the incident still has not been cleared. In June, an Elks lodge in Clinton, Mo., collapsed, killing one.

Old Town Cape believes one way to prevent this from happening again is to encourage owners to pool their resources to hire a structural engineer to conduct evaluations on large numbers of buildings.

"In Clinton, what they did was get some grants and pay $10,000 an for audit and quick survey of 50 or 60 buildings," said Steven Hoffman of Old Town Cape.

"A structural engineer could quickly ID whether it had a problem or not. So in Clinton 90 percent of those buildings got a clean bill of health and the other 10 percent would need to then hire someone to do a more in-depth analysis.

"So you get a lot of value for a fairly inexpensive price."

The more extensive evaluations generally cost more than $1,000 and take three to five hours, said Hoffman.

Hoffman said OTC will be active in ensuring the self-survey handouts and other information is distributed to as many downtown owners as possible.

"There isn't a property owner in this town that says 'my building is going to fall down and I just don't care.' Property owners care about the safety of their buildings," Hoffman said.

Ennis said realizing enforcement and ownership are two sides of the same coin is an important step.

"In the past it was always building owners versus the city," he said. "But the city wants owners to be in business and thriving and building, and owners want the same thing."

tgreaney@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 2