Overview: Demo performance bond not submitted by deadline
Officials will presumably discuss what comes next in the ongoing saga of the Park Avenue West strip mall that the city ordered demolished nine months ago.
MANSFIELD — The Mansfield Planning Commission will conduct a special meeting Thursday at 3 p.m. to (once again) discuss the future of the former West Park Shopping Center.
Officials will presumably discuss what comes next in the ongoing saga of the Park Avenue West strip mall that the city ordered demolished nine months ago.
West Mansfield Realty, LLC, a New York-based company that owns the property, failed to meet a deadline Tuesday at 4 p.m. to provide the city with all of the necessary bonds needed to guarantee demolition of the structure, according to Adrian Ackerman, the city’s community development & housing director.
That deadline was set after a 2 1/2-hour planning commission hearing on Aug. 8, a session that included an attorney for the company.
Ackerman said the company supplied a $50,000 appeal bond, but not the required performance bond sufficient to cover the demolition and clean-up of the building and the parking lot.
That bond must include the cost of asbestos abatement, landscaping and topsoil work, according to Ackerman.
Ackerman said it appeared West Mansfield Realty was trying to locate another demolition company but had not yet secured a contract for the work. It had previously been working with Adams Demolition, based in Maryland.
“What the Planning Commission plans to do at this point is up in the air,” Ackerman said.
After the city’s Codes and Permits department ordered West Mansfield on Nov. 14 to demolish the strip mall along the “Miracle Mile,” the company appealed the decision and the Planning Commission was granted a six-month extension to complete the work.
The deadline was July 14 — yet the dilapidated strip of shops remains.
City of Mansfield Law Director John Spon has counseled patience from the Planning Commission.
“I want to make sure that this process is perfect and does not make any mistakes at all. Because if any mistakes were made, we could be involved in appellate litigation for years,” Spon told commission members in July.