After months of frustration, clean-up of burned-down market begins

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DAYTON — Eight months later, cleanup is finally about to begin on a former supermarket destroyed in a fire.

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The high-pitched whine of a commercial dumpster being dropped never sounded so good to people living close to the former Cornell Meat Market.

“It’s a good thing when stuff comes together like that,” Derrick Porter said.

Porter lives next to the former supermarket.

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A fire roared through the long-time community gathering spot last October.

The total devastation forced city crews to do an emergency demolition, but the owner did not begin clean-up efforts.

The city put a fence around the area and was forced to start legal proceedings to get action.

The lawyer for a former property owner claimed he sold it weeks before the fire, but is cleaning it up in good faith.

He said cleanup has been slow because “the City of Dayton requires commercial property owners to treat every ounce of debris as asbestos.”

An aerial view shows the massive mess, and fire piles in the middle of a neighborhood.

City inspectors said that treating debris as if it contains asbestos is actually a federal and state environmental regulation. Not a city ordinance.

We will continue to follow this story.

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