DAYTON — Neighbors are worried about the slow progress to clean up a large fire pile where a meat market once stood in Dayton.
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The old Cornell Meat Market caught fire last Halloween, and an emergency demolition was ordered in the aftermath. Now, almost nine months later, debris piles are still all over the property.
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The sights, the sounds, and the smells are creating frustration for people living in the neighborhood.
“It’s so dangerous,” Belinda Richardson said.
Richardson told News Center 7’s Mike Campbell that she’s worried about asbestos because of how old the store was. She’s also dealing with rodents attracted by debris from the emergency demolition.
“You know, just running over here in the neighborhoods, you know, so it just smells,” she said. “It just looks awful.”
The market was a neighborhood for decades, but the fire in October created so much damage that it had to be demolished.
An aerial view shown on News Center 7 at 5:00 showed that things deteriorated and are still not better.
The property owner decided not to rebuild, and city leaders eventually took him to court on misdemeanor charges related to a public nuisance. A judge issued a warrant for him when he didn’t show up, but then he reached an agreement with the city to clean the site up.
“You know, someone will be there for a day or two, then you don’t see no one for like a week,” Richardson said.
News Center 7 checked on the cleanup work a dozen times in the last month. The contractors hired by the owner do appear overwhelmed, and small pockets of progress are surrounded by a dozen debris piles.
Richardson said it seems like the workers are “dragging their feet.”
The city did not put a timeline on the cleanup efforts once the owner received permits to do the work. At the time, they estimated three to four weeks, but it’s already been five weeks since then.
News Center 7 is working to see if there are options to force a faster pace.
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