FeedsCouncil accepts deed for theater
One of the first acts of the new owners of the Historic Wayne Theater was to prepare for its demolition.
The Wayne City Council voted unanimously to accept the deed for the property on Tuesday night and shortly after that, started the process that will bring a wrecking ball to the 80-year-old structure.
City Attorney John McKinney said otherwise the city would soon be in violation of its own dangerous building ordinance.
“It’s an awfully bad precedent to set,” he said. “I think from a legal standpoint (the council) has no choice.”
The action signifies the end of the theater, which has been vacant for more than 20 years since a fire destroyed the storefronts in front of the structure. City Manager John Zech said even that was a generous estimate of the time that has passed since the theater was in its heyday.
“It has not been used as a theater for 55 years,” he said.
The theater was cited under the dangerous and blighted building ordinance in 2006 and the volunteers that had tried to restore it were given a year to come up with funding to fix or redevelop it. Their last deadline ran out in December of 2007.
Wayne Mayor Al Haidous said he respected the effort that the theater board put into their attempts to save it, though.
“I know you worked very hard in many different ways to try to renovate that theater,” he told Chad Shenkel, president of the historic theater board and some other volunteers Tuesday night. “The economy was never good enough to help you achieve your dream.”
For a time, city officials offered the theater board the chance to turn the building into a ‘white box,’ essentially a stripped and safe shell ready for development. City Engineer Ramzi El-Gharib said, though, that the building had deteriorated to the point where that was no longer feasible.
“That building has some problems; it has some major problems,” he said, citing asbestos issues and breeches in the foundation “It’s not obvious from the street, but it’s a dangerous situation.
“The white box solution is out of the question at this time,” he added.
He estimated that it could cost as much as $200,000 to demolish the structure.
