By TOM GILCHRIST
For The Advertiser
MAYVILLE — To hear Mayville village President Clare Fryers tell it, Caro Community Hospital is causing an ailment in the heart of Mayville by not improving what an inspector calls a “dangerous building.”
The hospital is “showing no gratitude or respect back to this community” with regard to a vacant commercial building the hospital owns at 6101 Fulton St., Fryers said.
“Blight is the biggest crime in a small town,” Fryers said. “It brings in crime. When you see a place that’s rundown and vacant and it’s free shelter, who do you think runs in there?”
When asked if the hospital’s Mayville building constitutes “blight,” Caro Community Hospital President and Chief Executive Officer Marc Augsburger said “I don’t have any response to that.”
Augsburger, who began working at the hospital April 22, said he has seen the Mayville building, which once housed a physician’s office.
“I have honestly not been in the interior although I know that our portion of the building is whole and does not have any holes in the roof or anything like that,” Augsburger said.
A March 21 report by Curtis E. Stowe, chief building official with South Central Michigan Construction Code Inspection Inc., calls the structure a “dangerous building” under state law.
Stowe wrote that he inspected the building March 20, finding a “rotted roof” that causes brick to fall from the building’s rear exterior wall. He stated the building “is in danger of structural failure whereas the fieldstone foundation is failing due to the mortar and sand being washed out.”
Stowe declared the building “unsafe for any purpose due to split, notched and rotted floor joists.” An adjacent building at 6105 Fulton St. — owned by James A. Hascall II — allows water to enter the rear wall of the hospital-owned building, according to Stowe.
South Central Michigan Construction Code Inspection Inc. comprises 12 municipalities, including Tuscola County.
Mayville village leaders have sought bids to demolish the building owned by Hascall. Stowe recommended the village seek to demolish the hospital-owned building as well.
Fryers said he sent hospital officials a copy of Stowe’s report, though Augsburger said he hasn’t seen it.
“It would be interesting if such a document does exist,” Augsburger said. “It would probably be good if it was shared.”
The hospital has no plans to demolish, renovate or sell the building, according to Augsburger.
It will cost more than $200,000 to bring the building into compliance with construction codes, according to Fryers, who said it will cost about $124,000 to demolish the structure.
“The only thing (hospital leaders) have ever done to it in the 15 years they’ve owned it is to mow the lawn once in a while,” Fryers said last week, “and right now the lawn is (hip) deep all the way around the building for our town Sunflower Festival, so they can show the community what they think of us.”