Washington building owner cited for working without permit
The owner of a downtown Washington building may face daily fines after the façade of the building under renovation collapsed last week.
Kush Property Management, which took ownership of the former Hepinger’s Legacy Tavern at South Side, 352 S. Main St. in August, has been cited for working without a permit, according to Washington Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Donatelli.
Sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, bricks fell to the sidewalk from the building.
“We’re going to require that they get a structural engineer to work on it to say if it’s safe,” Donatelli said. He added that he could not speculate on the structural integrity of the building.
If the structure is deemed fixable, the company will be required to fix the wall per the engineer’s instructions. Donatelli said the company can be fined by a judge $100 to $600 each day the building is not repaired.
Donatelli claimed he was not aware of the work being done at the building. City Administrator Donn Henderson said most of the work was being done from the inside and may not have been apparent from the street.
“It’s the responsibility of the property owner to come to us. We have one code officer for the whole city,” Henderson said.
Mayor Scott Putnam also said the city was not aware of the work being done at the building.
“If we knew, we would have made them have a permit,” Putnam said.
Donatelli said the city is not sure who owns Kush Property Management. City tax records show tax bills are sent to the 352 S. Main address, and paid by Kush Property Management.
County tax records show the same. However, when the business registered as a limited liability company in July 2021, it used the address of 374 S. Main St., the current location of a nearby pizza shop, Pizza on Main.
This is not the first collapse in downtown Washington in recent memory. In July 2017, a three-story apartment building, known as the Montgomery building, collapsed on North Main Street. A tenant was trapped in the rubble for more than nine hours.
The city paid more than $1 million to have the structure demolished.