Engineer recommends demolishing 165-year-old White Pigeon building
WHITE PIEGON, Mich. — The White Pigeon village council met Tuesday for a special meeting to listen to a report by a structural engineer about a 165-year-old building.
Mike Wilson, an engineer with Jones Petrie Rafinski, Corp. in South Bend, Indiana, recommended that a building built before the start of the Civil War should be torn down because of a danger of collapse.
Wilson said in his report that the building is “irreparable, through the entire structure height.”
The three-story building built in 1856 sits at 100 E. Chicago Rd. and contains the Tasty Nut Shop and Soda Bar that has operated under seven owners for 101 years.
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“It’s a landmark and everything,” Margorie Hamminga, owner of Tasty Nut Shop, said Nov. 17. “And I hate to see it go because it’s history to the town. It’s their history.”
In the report Wilson included another recommendation, “that the structure should be thoroughly documented to preserve its history record to be kept available to the public, possibly also planning and constructing a historical exhibit at the site.”
White Pigeon Zoning Administrator Douglas Kuhlman sent a letter to Hamminga in October that stated the village received complaints about the condition of the building.
Wilson reported that village officials told him bricks were falling off the building.
The 78-page report detailed the structural dilapidation and included 69 photos that show cracked walls, sagging ceilings and foundational damage. The report stated a portion of the structure had sunk.
The report recommended closing the sidewalk and parking spaces near the west wall of the structure. The village had already placed barriers around parts of the building on the sidewalk.
White Pigeon village leaders have not voted on anything and would be meeting with lawyers to determine what the next steps.
