I thought this Chron story about the vacant buildings downtown and the nuisances they cause was useful, but it left me with one question: What, if anything, can the city do to force the issue? The city has the occasional Demolition Day, in which it tears down homes that have been deemed unsafe for habitation. I regularly get news releases from the city about the demolition of unsafe, public nuisance apartment complexes, usually as the culmination of legal action by the city against the property owner. Why don’t we ever see this happen for these downtown eyesores?
Well, obviously, it costs more to demolish a skyscraper than it does a bungalow, or an apartment complex. But by the same token, downtown real estate is valuable. I’m sure the city could figure out a way to get a third party involved to cover the cost of demolition in return for the land and a contract to Do Something with it. It may also be the case that the legal issues are more complex, and as such the city has generally avoided undertaking them. Possibly also it may be the case that the city lacks an ordinance to pursue demolition of skyscrapers. I have no idea, and unfortunately the story doesn’t say. But given that some of these buildings have been abandoned nuisances for a decade or more, you’d think there’d either be an incentive to overcome whatever obstacles exist to demolition or a reason to mention why they can’t be overcome.