City attacks unsafe buildings

Now emails obtained by El Paso Inc. through an open records request show the city has been gathering evidence on several vacant buildings it has identified as fire and safety hazards, as it pushes forward with a new enforcement strategy that has seen some early success.

“We’ve reinvested in our task force to go out and look at buildings and identify the most hazardous,” Fire Marshal Orlando Arriola told El Paso Inc. in an interview, speaking about Downtown.

“It is the epicenter. It is where El Paso began. We want to start there and move out,” Arriola said.

The emails show that since last year, inspectors with El Paso Fire Department have been going block by block and building by building in Downtown, documenting code violations.

The city has identified more than 100 vacant buildings in Downtown, and the fire department has compiled a list of the buildings that pose the greatest threat to safety, emails show. Some are historic and located in the heart of Downtown redevelopment efforts.

Photos taken by inspectors provide a rare glimpse inside some of Downtown’s most endangered buildings, which have been closed to the public for years.

Pictures of the American Furniture building as well as the historic Richard Caples and Kress buildings taken last fall show broken windows, piles of garbage, long-term water damage, mold and dicey wiring. There is ancient plumbing, piles of bird droppings more than six inches deep in some places, cracks in walls, graffiti and footprints.

Some photos have the feel of a zombie apocalypse movie. One shows the skeleton of a cat on bare concrete inside the American Furniture building.

All three buildings – American Furniture, Caples and Kress – are among several significant Downtown buildings owned by El Paso businessman William D. “Billy” Abraham. He is serving a two-year prison sentence in connection with the death of a man he struck and killed while driving drunk in 2010.

While he is incarcerated, Abraham’s business interests are being represented by Juliann Smith. In an email interview, she wrote, “With people like (city architect) Laura Foster assisting property owners to get their buildings up to standard rather than hung up in appeals court, Downtown El Paso has the best chance for true revival.”

Enforcement

In an email last month, Foster told Arriola that the city is ready to move forward with its new plan. “We are ready to begin property maintenance/board and secure investigations and enforcement in the downtown plan area, prioritizing as per last year’s task force data and the high hazard list you provided last week,” she wrote.

Arriola tasked one of his arson investigators, Nicholas Torres, with assessing Downtown’s vacant buildings.

In an email dated Feb. 15, Torres wrote: “Between us and the city we will basically (be) going block by block every month till the problems are fixed and then go back again to make sure and then again… They are just exhausted with downtown but this is what is going to be the norm…”

Because the conditions of the buildings are so bad, “we may have stages of inspection,” Torres wrote in an email last month to Max Grossman, vice chair of the El Paso County Historical Commission.

The fire department has created a catalog that ranks buildings by their fire and safety risk, Arriola confirmed, with level one buildings posing the greatest safety risk and level four buildings the least.

The catalogue is in draft form, and Arriola said he is not ready to release the list to the public. He did say the American Furniture building was a high priority.

“I will document the hazards, fire protection, building history and security. This list will be placed into the Investigations drive under the Vacant building folder and will be updated at least monthly,” Torres wrote in a June 2015 email.

Torres mentions four unsecured buildings in a September email that he had “been able to find in the last few weeks” – the American Furniture building at 105 N. Oregon, Kress Building at 100 E. Mills, Richard Caples Building at 300-306 E. San Antonio and a building at 200 E. San Antonio.

Last month, Torres described the condition of the Kress Building this way:

“We found the roof doors were breached which allowed access in and out of the Kress and access to all the roofs on that block. The basement has leaking water/sewer discharge and its pooling on the floor, there is broken pipes from corrosion.”

Six-year effort

The latest push to bring vacant buildings into compliance with safety standards is a continuation of the city’s efforts going back at least six years. That’s when it ordered Abraham to board and secure the American Furniture Co. building.

Abraham objected, and the dispute landed in court. Since 2010, an injunction has prohibited the city from moving forward to enforce its order.

The case had broader ramifications, throwing cold water on the city’s efforts to enforce safety and building codes in Downtown. City officials moved cautiously, wary of provoking another lawsuit.

“That was a big test for us as a city to determine what will happen ultimately,” Arriola said. “When the court ruled in our favor, then it was time to go ahead and take the steps we hadn’t been able to do for so many years.”

The injunction was recently lifted and the city issued an order for Abraham to board and secure his building, which he began doing last month. A bakery and an elevator service company are now interested in leasing, according to Smith.

“Rather than adversaries, becoming partners with the city and its planning and development department is what has happened recently,” said Smith, who has facilitated construction and negotiations while Abraham is in prison.

When the American Furniture building is boarded and secured, inspectors will move on to the next building on the list.

“If we can get the American Furniture up to at least minimum code compliance and secured, then we can apply that to other buildings,” Arriola said.

The focus, he said, is helping property owners make their buildings safe. But the code does have teeth. If a property owner evades city orders to board and secure their buildings, the city would do the work and send the bill to the property owner. If the property owner refuses to pay, a lien could be placed on the building.

“Once business owners understand the city is eager to work with them hand in hand they will be more enthusiastic to rent a space in a historical building knowing that the city is going to assist them as they remodel and build out,” Smith said. “This should attract more tenants not only for Abraham but for other building owners downtown.”

City Council passed its first vacant building ordinance in 2012 to address the problem of vacant, dangerous buildings in Downtown.

The ordinance was revised in 2013, after a fire in 2012 destroyed one of Downtown’s oldest buildings, where John Wesley Hardin once practiced law.

Unworkable

But the ordinance proved unworkable in practice, and the Fire Department and city inspectors struggled to enforce it. Property owners said it was confusing and difficult to comply with.

In 2014, only 11 percent of vacant buildings in Downtown were in compliance with one of the ordinance’s less painful provisions, which required owners to register their vacant buildings, according to city data.

“With the number of staff hours and time put into the whole process, that was a really low indicator that the ordinance was successful,” Arriola said.

Many of the vacant Downtown buildings identified as high risk in a 2012 sweep by the city look exactly as they did four years ago. Photos from inspections then mostly mirror those taken last fall.

“The most troublesome buildings we identified originally remain troublesome today,” he said.

Since the vacant building ordinance was passed in 2012, there have been more than 60 vacant building fires in the city. About 40 percent of those fires occurred in or near Downtown, according to city data.

But the city’s efforts haven’t been entirely unsuccessful, and Arriola said the number of unsecured vacant buildings has shrunk.

One success story is a building owned by Abraham at 101 N. Mesa that was vacant, and the site of a murder in 2014, but is now occupied by a shop that sells prom and wedding dresses.

Arriola said the American Furniture building is shaping up to be another success story.

Arriola said the Fire Department and city inspectors are moving forward with a new, gentler strategy. It cuts through red tape, is less punitive, more pragmatic and involves working more closely with property owners.

No sprinklers

The Fire Department proposed several revisions to the vacant building ordinance last year, which have been formalized in a draft ordinance. But it is still being tweaked, Arriola said.

If passed by City Council, it would rescind the registration requirement as well as requirements to install fire sprinkler systems in vacant buildings and post hazard placards.

The Fire Department stopped applying those parts of the vacant building ordinance a year ago, and has focused on safeguarding the buildings, Arriola said.

“We already have a fire code and building code. It’s not about waiting for a vacant building ordinance to be revisited, revised or amended. No. It’s about doing something now with what we have. And from there we can learn,” he said.

The requirement to install fire sprinkler systems is particularly problematic, because it contradicts the fire code, Arriola said.

“As a fire code official, I realized I’m going to be stuck in court forever having to back up an ordinance that is contradictory to the fire code,” he said. “We don’t want to do that. We want to be more practical.”

The proposed ordinance would establish a code compliance program and requires owners to secure their vacant buildings to prevent illegal entry.

That’s the the cause of most fires in vacant buildings, according to Arriola.

It’s not clear when the ordinance will be considered by City Council. So far it has not been scheduled for introduction, Arriola said.

Email El Paso Inc. reporter Robert Gray at rsgray@elpasoinc.com or call (915) 534-4422 ext. 105. Twitter: @ReporterRobby.