Declared a hazard,
grocery store razed

By Tom Morphet

In the late 1950s, Connor’s Motors was a modern automobile showroom and service station, with shiney new Fords behind plate glass windows and a garage with hydraulic lifts and an electric door.

Norm Blank, who remembers the place, was among a crowd of residents who watched the former garage and grocery store at Third and Dalton torn down Monday afternoon. “There’s a lot of history in that building.”

Jim Studley, president of Haines Assisted Living, a non-profit that owns the property it received as a donation last fall, was hoping the building might stand long enough to cleanly remove asbestos shingle siding and to salvage beams, copper pipes and other materials inside.

Those hopes died when the roof of the structure collapsed around 7 a.m. Monday, sending siding and other debris into Third Avenue. Borough officials, monitoring the building since its walls started bulging last week, told Studley to remove what they said was a hazard to pedestrians and motorists. “I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation,” Studley said Monday, as an excavator crumpled the building into a mound of debris.

The building had been vacant about five years, and heavy snow loads in recent winters had apparently taken a toll, opening large leaks in the roof. Firefighters who surveyed it six weeks ago said the roof and second floor were bowed as much as four feet. Ice covered sections of the ground floor and shifting inside the building had snapped beams and destroyed door jams.

Following consultation with the borough, Studley placed concrete barricades on the building’s west side Feb. 26 and cordoned off the sidewalk where a wall appeared to be buckling, popping off siding.

“If I had the funding to (demolish) it right now, I’d do it right now,” Studley said at the time. He estimated the cost of demolition and cleaning the site at $300,000 and said he’d been in contact with state legislators representing Haines for money to help pay for the job.

Fire chief Scott Bradford toured the building in November, looking to use it for rescue and escape drills, but decided its condition was too precarious. During the more recent walk-through, he became concerned about a possible collapse.

Because of asbestos in siding and possibly in other parts of the building, Studley had received demolition bids from contractors with asbestos certification, he said last week. “The problem is, if I push it over, I’ve got asbestos there in a pile. That complicates it a little bit for taking a bulldozer and knocking it over.”

On Monday, Studley received permission from regulatory authorities to knock it down, with conditions that workers nearby wear protective masks and that water be sprayed on the building during wrecking. Asbestos, a fibrous mineral formerly used in construction, is hazardous when airborne.

On Monday, Studley said he didn’t know if pushing over the building would add to the cost of removing it. A one-story section on its east side was left standing and the mound was covered with visqueen to reduce asbestos hazard.

Three different owners operated the building as a grocery store, including the family of former City of Haines mayor Dave Berry, which owned it from 1977 to 1995. Upstairs in the building were four apartments, including one where his mom, Judy Berry, lived and had decorated a bathroom with pink fixtures and tiles.

Berry said his family was concerned enough about snow loads to shovel the roof. “We always had to shovel it off. A roof that size with snow on it, that’s a whole lot of weight.”

Borough public works chief Bruce Smith last week predicted a couple of feet of wet snow would collapse the building. About five inches of snow fell during the weekend, turning to rain before the roof caved in.