BOONVILLE - Three buildings on the Boonville town square are slated for demolition, possibly by the end of the year.
Mayor Pam Hendrickson said the buildings are falling apart — with broken windows, crumbling bricks, rampant mold growth and caved-in ceilings — and are beyond rehabilitation.
The city has acquired the three buildings at 130, 132 and 134 W. Locust Street over the past five years but recently received about $250,000 in grant money to tear down the structures. The Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, and the Indiana Finance Authority, funded the grants for Boonville.
“We’re thankful for that because then we didn’t have to use city taxpayers’ money,” Hendrickson said.
American Structurepoint, an Indianapolis-based engineering company, is working with the city to assess the properties and put together a demolition plan for an outside contractor.
Steve Bruns, senior director of technical services, said he doesn’t know yet when the project will be bid on for demolition.
“When we do assessments, first thing we’re looking for is we’re looking at deterioration and any kind of structural problems with the building,” Bruns said. “We look for water entry, cracking, structural damage first, to see what the foundation looks like and where the deterioration is. That’s kind of what we do in a very generic sense, but it’s a much more complicated process.”
Hendrickson said the Structurepoint report dates the buildings’ construction to the mid- to late-1800s. She said it’s unfortunate to lose the historic buildings, but the amount of damage and hazardous safety conditions make the buildings impractical to salvage.
“It’s imperative if you own these old buildings you inspect them for damage that needs to be repaired,” she said.
She said the city has been working on getting two of the buildings down for years, and purchased the third Locust property in September 2013.
Once the buildings are down, the property will become a green space.
“The addition of the pocket park will be beautiful and a welcomed addition, and a contrast to what is there now,” she said.
Terry Phillippe, Boonville Now president, said the nonprofit organization will create the green space in the lots once the buildings are taken down. Boonville Now is a community development corporation created in 2011 to help implement the downtown redevelopment plan.
He said the pocket park is part of the city’s master plan.
“It gives the people a place to gather, it makes it more beautiful,” Phillippe said. “It’s a place for our master gardeners to come do a project, a place for our volunteers to come out and help. It’s not only a place, but a feature for people in our community to come together and work on something.”
He said they have been working on the park plan for about three years. They have talked with Purdue University about using architecture students to help plan the design of the park.