A month after he was told he’d have to demolish two buildings, property-owner Eric Slack has been given a bit of a reprieve.
This week City Council agreed to let Slack finish the siding on one of the buildings, as long as the work is done by the end of January, but decided the second building will have to go by the end of February.
Councillor Anna Ashley said she moved the recommendation because Slack has done some siding on the first house.
“We need to give him some credit for that. And I did notice in the second part of the motion that it did give him until the end of February, so I thought there would be an opportunity if needed for him to come back to us,” Ashley said.
Slack’s properties are located at 401 and 403 5th Avenue East. Last April he received notice from the City that they were considered a nuisance.
He responded by doing some work and removed 4100 pounds of debris from the site, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy the City’s demands.
In December, he received another notice from the City telling him that the two buildings needed to come down.
Slack responded December 23 with a letter stating the houses look run down, but structurally are very solid homes, well built, and with solid foundations.
“I have a permit to vinyl side the front house. We replaced any soft spots, we t-vecked the building and we have since sided it,” his letter stated.
According to Slack the houses were built to house doctors and nurses that worked in the nearby Prince Rupert Hospital when it was located on Fifth Avenue.
“I would like to side the back house as a shop, due to the history of the houses. The front house is no longer a nuisance and the back house can look the same by January 31, 2011,” Slack wrote.
Building inspector Allan Scott, in a report to council, said as of January 5, 75 per cent of the siding on the front house has been completed.
“The building is looking better and when the siding has been completed it will no longer be considered a nuisance,” Scott
reported.
To keep the second building as a workshop, Scott said, would conflict with the Zoning Bylaw because the total lot coverage is almost 70 per cent of the building encroaches into both rear and side setbacks.