1200 Prince Edward Street – still not going anywhere

The last time the City Council talked about the burned-out empty shell of a building at 1200 Prince Edward St. was a year and a half ago, and the decision they made then wasn’t one that the immediate neighbors of this property were happy about.

Since that January 2009 vote, nothing at all has happened at that property, which burned in 2003, except that it’s been re-listed for sale at $475,000, a little lower than the previous price of $600,000.

Tonight, the two people who live on either side of this building on Prince Edward Street asked the City Council for the same action they’ve been requesting for about seven years — either tear down the building or otherwise clean up the property, or do something that will force the owner to take those actions.

Neighbors Carl Grenn and Bill McLain said that during this winter’s heavy snows, nobody ever cleared the sidewalks around this building, and they were pretty much impassable for weeks after the snows fell. A tree that was uprooted during the storms and leaned over to cover one of the sidewalks made it unusable even after the snow had melted.

McLain said someone came by to trim the tree, mow the knee-high grass and pick up trash around the property only after a neighbor complained to the city.

This council has not been very willing to force the removal of this building in the past. Some believe it is a contributing structure to the city’s historic district–an idea that the neighbors find laughable, since only a few walls of the building remain.

But Grenn and McLain still gave it a shot tonight.

“After seven cold winters, don’t you think it is now time to do something for our neighborhood and get rid of this ugly, dangerous, derelict blight?” Grenn asked the council members.

On an unrelated note, this block was also the scene of armed robbery yesterday evening. Keith Epps has details here.

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