Condemned Silver Lake buildings face demolition

The building on Lake Street in Silver Lake faces demolition after officials condemned it, citing code violations (Photo by Gail Peckler-Dziki).
The building on Lake Street in Silver Lake faces demolition after officials condemned it, citing code violations (Photo by Gail Peckler-Dziki).

Numerous electrical violations reported

By Gail Peckler-Dziki
Correspondent

A building in downtown Silver Lake will soon be demolished.

The soon to be vacant Lake Street building with the addresses of 313, 315, 317 and 319 will be boarded up.

In late winter this year, fire and electrical inspections uncovered a myriad of violations and the building has been found to be “a safety threat to life and health and is unsanitary, thereby being unfit for human habitation.”

That information was in a letter sent to the tenants living in the apartments above the Sugar and Spice beauty shop, the only business left.

Tenants received a letter from Ronald Carlson of Forseti Consulting, LLC that was hand-delivered on March 15.

The letter told the tenants that they must be out by April 7.

But, after Village President Bruce Nopenz received several phone calls from tenants, he negotiated a later vacate date of April 30.

“There just wasn’t enough time for people to relocate,” Nopenz said.

Village of Silver Lake Building Inspector, Royce Kennedy, received a March 7 letter from Forseti Consulting, LLC, the company that holds the building in receivership.

Kennedy sent the letter to the village attorney’s office, where it sat for two weeks.

Ronald Carlson, representative of Forseti Consulting, then sent a letter to the tenants, using the March 7 date as a month’s notice for tenants to move out.

The letter stated that the firewalls had been penetrated, fire doors replaced with wood doors, rear exit doors replaced without panic hardware and the rear door at 313 East Lake Street has an interior screen door not installed to code.

The buildings, currently in receivership, found potential renters by one of the owners, a bank.

However, inspections uncovered the sad state of the building.

About two months ago, an outside certified electrical inspector was called to perform an inspection, which also discovered numerous electrical code violations.

Silver Lake Village Trustee Eric Erickson, who is a master electrician, also looked at the units.

Nopenz said Erickson showed him numerous pictures of various electrical problems.

Once the building is vacated, Nopenz said that it will be boarded up and eventually demolished.

“It won’t be an easy demolition,” he said. “There may be asbestos and we know that there are buried fuel tanks under at least part of the building. That will require special care.”

If it were needed, the help of services like Wisconsin Robotic Demolition services or elsewhere could be employed. These robots can often be faster, more precise, and more consistent than humans when it comes to removing concrete.

They are hopeful that the demolition goes smoothly as they are using one of the best demolition companies in the area, similar to that of Austin Cleanup & Container, a professional demolition company in Austin.

The fuel tanks were used to hold heating fuel.

Several years ago, when the Silver Lake branch of the Community Library occupied one of the units, he was called to conduct an inspection prior to moving in.

“There was raw sewage leaking on to the floor of the unit,” he said. “That had to be fixed prior to the library taking possession.”

The water leakage problem from the second floor apartments forced the library to move and has been vacant since.


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