AUGUSTA — The city on Thursday may condemn two dilapidated buildings, including a single-family home that has been deteriorating for years at 118 Civic Center Drive, across from Denny’s restaurant.
City councilors are scheduled to discuss a staff recommendation to declare the faded black-and-blue vacant home a dangerous building, condemn it and order the owner to either fix it or tear it down.
City Manager William Bridgeo said the city previously has urged the owner to remove the building, but he has not done so.
“You just have to look at it to see it is beyond salvageable,” Bridgeo said of the building, which is near the Marketplace at Augusta, the University of Maine at Augusta, and the Augusta Civic Center, all of which draw traffic to the area. “We’ve been hearing, from the council and public, about concerns about this property for some time. It is in extreme disrepair.”
The building, according to city assessing records, is owned by Zi Qian Zhang, of Swansea, Massachusetts. Zhang could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A man who answered the phone for a number listed on a for sale sign on the property said he would check with the owner but had no immediate comment.
A dozen Chinese restaurants in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were owned by a Zi Qian Zhang, of Swansea, Massachusetts, according to previous media reports and court records. In 2011 some of those restaurants were raided by immigration agents. In 2014 two Waterville women, Mei Ya Zhang and Mei Juan Zhang, who managed some of the restaurants in Maine, were sentenced on immigration, money laundering and tax fraud charges. Zi Qian Zhang is the uncle of those two women and was described by a federal authorities as the patriarch of the restaurant organization.
Bridgeo said such vacant, visible properties can become an “attractive nuisance,” which could draw vandals and transients who could, in turn, start a fire or cause other damage.
Zhang bought the property, assessed for tax purposes at $216,600, in 2004.
Councilors on Thursday, as they discuss condemning the 118 Civic Center Drive property, also plan to discuss a similar staff recommendation to condemn a large, leaning, dilapidated chicken barn at 266 Church Hill Road, which the city staff says is at risk of imminent collapse and could fall onto a neighboring church property.
Bridgeo said it is the proximity of the chicken barn to the neighboring Church Hill Baptist Church that concerns the city. He said if the barn were in a field, not near any neighboring properties, the city probably wouldn’t take action.
City records say the property’s owners are Daniel and Annette Breau.
The large, gray, wooden structure, with wooden shingle siding on the portion closest to Church Hill Road and metal siding on the end farthest from the road, has three large wooden utility poles leaning against it on the church property side of the barn, which appear to be helping to hold the structure up.
Bridgeo said Matt Nazar, the city development director, would explore the possibility of the barn being salvaged for wood and other materials that could be reused elsewhere. That could help offset the cost of demolishing the barn.
If councilors approve of the proposed condemnations and the owners of either property then don’t take prompt action to fix or tear down the buildings, state statutes would allow the city to tear them down, or hire a firm to tear them down, and then bill the property owners for the cost. If they can’t or won’t pay that cost, the city then could place liens on the properties.
Rob Overton, a city code enforcement officer, said he has tried to get the owners of the properties to take action voluntarily to address their buildings’ problems, but they have not done so.
Bridgeo said the barn’s owners have indicated they can’t afford the cost of having the barn torn down, which Bridgeo said could be “quite high.”
Councilors are scheduled to meet to discuss the proposed building condemnations at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the council chamber at Augusta City Center.
Councilors are also scheduled to:
• Hear a briefing from Bridgeo on a recent controversy involving the city and The Red Barn restaurant, the owner of which posted a video on social media stating the city had fined the business $200 for a 2016 benefit event for Honor Flight Maine, which was incorrect. The city did propose, in a consent agreement, the restaurant pay $200 for a 2016 event that allegedly exceeded the decibel limits of the city’s noise ordinance, but that event was not for Honor Flight Maine. The video, since taken down, had received more than 1.4 million views since last Friday.
• Discuss putting the creation of a 2018 Charter Commission on the November 2017 election ballot; and
• Discuss the capital improvement plan for 2018 to 2022.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
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