ADRIAN — The city of Adrian could save money by having the old Adrian Inn building demolished by Department of Public Works employees instead of hiring a contractor, city commissioners were told at their Feb. 17 meeting.

Engineering services director Matt Tomaszewski reported that an abatement survey to determine how much asbestos abatement will be needed is nearly complete. He noted that the abatement could be expensive — possibly a few hundred thousand dollars — but demolition could begin as soon as it is completed, if that’s what the commission decides to do.

Tomaszewski said one local contractor estimated that they would charge about $300,000 for the demolition, but he believes having the job done by DPW employees would cost about $170,000.

In addition to saving money, he said, having the DPW do the job would allow it to be done faster, because putting the project out to bid would take about six weeks.

Another benefit, Tomaszewski said, is that if the city does the work itself, the concrete from the site could be recovered, crushed, and added to the stone pile that is used for city street work.

The property has long been a headache for the city, which at one point had declared it to be a drug house. The city purchased it for $800,000 in 2022 as a short-term measure to help people who were displaced by the emergency evacuation of Riverview Terrace, but the building is in bad shape.

Police chief and acting city administrator Vince Emrick said that the Adrian Police Department has responded to numerous calls from the Adrian Inn, and it appears that people have been cutting water pipes and electric wires out of the building for scrap.

City attorney Burke Castleberry said that although the city has been securing rooms as they are vacated, people have done things like ripping out HVAC units to get into the rooms after they are secured.

Tomaszewski also reported that, of the eight people currently known to be living in the building, the city discovered that six had not yet been served eviction notices, so that process must be gone through before work can proceed.

Commissioner Bob Behnke asked if the city has heard from anyone interested in buying the property. Emrick said the city received a letter from the Lenawee District Library asking about the land, and Adrian College has also expressed interest. However, the property has not been listed for sale or marketed yet.

Commissioner Mary Roberts expressed support for the idea of having the DPW demolish the building and then listing it for sale. She added that ideally, she would like it to go back on the tax rolls rather than being sold to a tax-exempt nonprofit. 

In other items from the Feb. 17 commission meeting:

• The commission approved amendments to the city’s downtown development plan and extension of the downtown Tax Increment Financing district. The TIF district is a funding mechanism in which increased tax revenue from new development in an area is captured to be used for improvement projects in that area. Jane Dixon, principal planner with the consulting firm McKenna, noted that the items included in the downtown development plan are not requirements and some of them couldn’t happen without the city allocating more funds, but by passing the plan, the city is authorizing the Downtown Development Authority to work toward those goals.
• The commission awarded the bid for demolition of the house at 214 Comstock St. to Desbrough Excavating from Dundee, which was the low bidder. Code enforcement officer Glenn Preston wrote in a memo that the city has never worked with Desbrough before, so he reached out to the village of Maybee and received a positive reference.
• Tomaszewski reported that one of the DPW’s fuel tanks did not pass state inspection and will need to be replaced. It may be advisable to replace the diesel tank at the same time, he said, since that tank is about 40 years old as well. The city owns the tanks, but they are also used by Adrian Public Schools, the Lenawee Intermediate School District, and Lenawee Transportation, all of whom pay the city an additional 8 cents per gallon on top of cost to be able to fuel their vehicles at the DPW facility.
• The commission approved a change to the asbestos abatement contract for the former Eagles building on North Winter Street. Initially, the company that did the asbestos survey thought that it would be too dangerous to remove asbestos from the roof manually and it would need to be done as part of the demolition, but the roof turned out not to be as dangerous as originally thought. The change will result in a lower total cost for the project.
• During the public comment portion of the meeting, city resident Jerick Timm spoke about frustrations with getting the city to consider new ideas. He specifically said that he was unable to get anywhere with suggesting alternative designs to address safety concerns for cyclists and pedestrians with the planned Winter Street streetscape project. Timm also questioned the emphasis on parking-related projects in the downtown development plan, asking why it is needed when a recent parking study indicated the city doesn’t need additional parking. Also during public comment, downtown business owner Mary Sieler disagreed that downtown has enough parking, and she specifically spoke about spaces in the Church Street parking lot always being taken by contractors working on a nearby construction project. She asked if the city could seek permission to have contractors park in the private lot at the old fire station on the south side of Church Street, opening up those spaces in the public lot.