A crew is carefully taking down a historic house in Old Town in preparation for a reconstruction at the Park Avenue site.
The work at 1021 Park Ave. was ongoing during the workweek. By the middle of the week, a portion of the rear of the house had been removed and work had occurred on the north side of the structure.
City Hall in March approved the deconstruction, indicating there were safety issues with the house.
The City Hall approval says the structure dates to approximately 1901. The project entails building a new house that will look like a replica of the old one from the outside. A new structure could be slightly larger than the 1,008-square-foot house that stood there prior to the start of the work. City Hall has not yet received the plans for a small addition, though.
The approval of the deconstruction provides an overview of the City Hall process at the site, stretching from the mid-1990s and noting that the Park City Building Department in the spring of 2013 ordered the owner to “repair, vacate, and demolish the structure . . . due to severe overall deterioration of the building.”
“The structure cannot be made serviceable through repair,” the approval says.
The owner, Park City contractor Bill Hart, in the fall of 2013 was issued an administrative citation “for not complying” with the order issued that spring, it says. The owner submitted paperwork at City Hall in late 2014 with the intention of making repairs, the approval says.
The approval says the house is “structurally unsound” with a large hole in the roof and that the “Building Department has found that the existing structural system is in danger of immediate collapse because of these defects.” There is also mold, it says.
“The structure is in severe decline to due to years of deferred maintenance. Due to its deteriorated state, the interior has significant mold growth that has rendered it uninhabitable. Paint deterioration and severe wood rot are also present on the exterior,” the approval says.
David White, a Park City architect hired by the owner to craft the preservation plan, said the entire house will be brought down.
“It’s really structurally deficient,” White said, describing that the roof is sagging.
He said some siding on the north side of the house should be rescued and used in the new project.