April 18, 2008
Sunny Market now even more gross (UPDATED)
The old Sunny Market is a bad neighbor to the homes behind it on 26th Street and O Street. Standing water several feet deep in the loading depot out back has become a bathroom of choice for certain folks and there is already heavy insect activity in the area.
A resident close by says:
We’ve called the city several times but, so far, nothing has been done. I’d really like to get this handled before the weather turns hot and we have a big smelly mess on our hands.
This seems like an obvious health hazard, right?
UPDATED
From the Office of the Press Secretary to the Mayor:
Upon reports by citizens of this public hazard, Building Commissioner
Art Dahlberg sent (via certified mail on April 16) a “Notice of
Violation for an Unsafe Structure” with a compliance date by April 22.
Due to the immediacy of this situation and rather than waiting to see if
the owner would act, however, Art coordinated with the City’s Dept. of
Public Utilities to have the water pumped out from the Sunny Market
loading dock area and the property owner will be billed for the City’s
expenses in this regard.Bottom line: the City is not going to tolerate these types of health and
safety situations that downgrade a neighborhood.
yep. the mosquitoes were HORRIBLE this past summer. what’s more…maybe my eyes are deceiving me but couldn’t small animals and children drown in that much water?
Pour one full container of Clorox into the standing water… it should take care of both problems…
I would think there has to be a drain in there somewhere…most likely just clogged with debris. I doubt they lived with this situation every time it rained.
Does anybody ever actually go to the CAPS meeting at the EDI? Should each neighborhood association start to send someone to that meeting, if in fact it occurs still? I think this is just the sort of thing they are designed to address - a clear public health and safety hazard.
New Visions Civic League has a regular person that attends the CAPS meeting. The time that I went I there were several folks from Fulton and Unity (north of Fairmount) there, too.
I called the city health dept. today from work when I had a chance. Unfortunately I ran into a series of really NOT helpful people; the first one said they regulate restaurants but not grocery stores, and wanted me to call the state Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services, then actually listened to me when I reiterated for the FOURTH time that I was talking about standing water. She transferred me to someone who sounded bored but said she would send someone to look at it. If I have a chance tomorrow I will try to make some other calls. I don’t actually live near it, but the picture drove me nuts and into the kind of energy it sometimes takes to get someone at the City to listen and take action. I don’t suppose anyone has tried calling Miz McQuinn?
I understand that the situation has been brought to the attention of one of the officers connected to CAPS, which ought to bring some sort of resolution.
It seems that this post got some attention down at city hall; I’ve heard that the area was drained and limed today. Yay for us and thanks to the folks at downtown for paying attention. By all accounts, they jumped on this as soon it got routed to the right people.
eww, eww, eww. Thanks to everyone who complained loud enough to get something done.
Yes, thanks for your help!
Great Job!
Some Church Hill residents even wrote about it on their blogs on Sunday.
[...] that ended up being picked up by 2 of the local TV stations this weekend. Last Sunday’s Sunny Market now even more gross and Monday’s neighbor vs neighbor became nb12’s City responds to online complaints and [...]
After the large amount of rain that we received on Sunday, I am sad to report that the dock is once again a pond. Maybe once the rain stops the water will recede, but who knows at this point.
Eric, sounds like you need to contact Art Dahlberg. Cut and pasted from above:
“From the Office of the Press Secretary to the Mayor:
Upon reports by citizens of this public hazard, Building Commissioner
Art Dahlberg sent (via certified mail on April 16) a “Notice of
Violation for an Unsafe Structure” with a compliance date by April 22.
Due to the immediacy of this situation and rather than waiting to see if
the owner would act, however, Art coordinated with the City’s Dept. of
Public Utilities to have the water pumped out from the Sunny Market
loading dock area and the property owner will be billed for the City’s
expenses in this regard.
Bottom line: the City is not going to tolerate these types of health and
safety situations that downgrade a neighborhood.”
Seems all they did was PUMP it out - need to get the drain fixed, it appears. Meanwhile, perhaps the city will pump it again, once the rain stops. Good luck. I was singularly unimpressed with the response I got at the health dept when I called.
We really ought to be narrowing our criticism towards the OWNER and not the City on this. The City has already shown how much more responsive it is than the owner. It would be a negligent use of the public purse for the City to take on expensive drainage repairs until first trying to get the owner to pony up.
“Seems like all they did was PUMP it out”
Since when did it become a city issue to fix drainage problems on private property? I think the city did a great job to assist with this. It would serve better purpose to attack the OWNER on this one.
DJ
The city took care of an imminent health problem and then billed the Owner for the work and put him on notice.
They didn’t “fix” the drainage problem. But now the Owner knows, at a minimum, he will continue to get bills like this until the problem is fixed…
I understand what the city did and appreciate it very much. I was questioning why someone would say “Seems like all they did was PUMP it out”.
What did they expect, the city to install new plumbing on this building?
The owner should have known about this a long time ago. I called the phone number for the “For Sale/Lease” advertisement on the side of the building over two months ago when the loading depot first started to flood. No one answered the phone, but I did leave a message on their voicemail system. I never received a response and subsequently called the City instead as my second course of action to the problem. In my opinion, the Owner and/or Leasing/Sales Agent have had plenty of notice about the problem. I am grateful that the City cleaned it up. I just hope the issue will be resolved by the Owner soon.
That is great stuff. The local blog becomes like 12 on Your Side. In the old days the City might well have paid for private property repairs. Either that or let the problem sit for months.
It appears that someone (I’m assuming it’s the owner) is pumping the rainwater out of the loading depot right now.
Because of the repeat drainage problem due to the rain over the weekend, and the post that it was backed up again on Monday, I called the city - actually, Mr. Dahlberg’s office. I tried 311, but our phone system at work won’t support it. I got error messages. SO, looked in the new phone book, and there are very few numbers listed for Community Development - most of the offices now say to call 311 (which isn’t an option for me at work) - and now I’m not even sure what number IS listed that I dialed!
However, I spoke to a REALLY nice, very interested woman by the name of Linda Klemm (hope I’ve got that right). Unlike my call to the health dept. last week, this call seemed of great interest. Ms. Klemm took all my info, including my reference to this blog (yay) and my work phone number.
Couple of hours later, I got a voice mail from Mr. Art Dahlberg himself, I was amazed that he took the time to do that. He said that he’d been to the site, they were in process of contacting owner, there were various problems (I hope I’m getting this right) but they were getting it straightened out. So if someone down there at the city is reading this - I was impressed, and I’m sure there are many thanks from the neighbors who live in close proximity to that backed up drain behind the former grocery!
To those on this blog who objected to the city fixing and billing the owner - that is the way immediate dangers to public health problems are handled. I remember a building up here, some years ago, had problems that could have been a danger to the public walking by, so the city did shoring up then billed the owner. They won’t do that over something that isn’t a danger, but things that create a danger to public health and safety usually get some priority, or are supposed to get priority. The city is BILLING THE OWNER. And if the owner doesn’t pay then a lien goes against the property. I’ve seen it happen before, and I’m glad it’s happening now, everyone should be glad the city is taking such an interest.
Again, I’m real impressed with the action on the former 25th Street grocery, the city officials in Community Development really got it right this time, in my book.
Now if only we could do something about the drug dealers openly dealing across the street (O Street, one of the delipated brick row houses) … I’ve been calling the cops about it but unfortunately activity is up.
I’ve received this from the city:
To further complain about the Sunny Market . . .
Who else was awoken by the burglar alarm at 5:30 this morning? When the police were called at 6am, they indicated that there was nothing that they could do and we would have to wait for the owner to show up and turn off the alarm. The alarm went off for an hour and a half.
The city is citing this in a press release about how they are battling blight:
Isn’t this a band-aid the mayor is touting rather than a solution?
I could rent a pump from Home Depot and get the same done in less than a couple hours I am sure.
The pumping out of the water was the short term fix. Billing the owner of the vacant property seems to have been enough of an incentive to get the property owner to deal with the underlying issue, though.
I was talking to a neighbor this weekend about this property and how it would make a great food co-op. I’m not sure that the location is ideal as it would need to serve the larger Richmond area, and thus the “critical mass” argument.
There are a few neighborhood co-ops in town that are not very well organized, and it is difficult to buy food from them because you have to order in bulk and the pick-up sites are erratic at best, so it would be great to have a permanent, real co-op that supports locally grown, organic produce, grains, dairy and meats as well as other wholesale organic products. It’s time, Richmond.
Anyone else feel the same?