A local group of volunteers, trying to figure whether Oak Park Village Hall could have done things differently to prevent a building collapse earlier this month, got its review rolling last week.
The Building Codes Advisory Commission has been tasked with figuring out whether Oak Park’s Building and Property Standards Department should have acted differently to help head off the partial collapse of 201-211 Harrison on Aug. 10. Commissioners didn’t reach any conclusions, but some in the audience rushed to defend the building department ahead of last week’s discussion.
“The responsibility lies squarely with the property owner. The property owner is responsible for their building, whether it’s under construction or not,” said local architect Tom Bassett-Dilley, who previously worked with the property owner, Chris Kleronomos, though he wasn’t the architect for the current work taking place there. He called a Wednesday Journal editorial last week, which criticized the building department, “out of line” and “farfetched.”
Rick Easty, who owns a business on Harrison Street and is a general contractor, also defended the building department during public comment.
“They’ve been nothing but professional,” Easty said. “Like every contractor, once in a while we’ve had differences of a opinion, but that’s a healthy part of the relationship.”
He thinks the village should find a way to disallow problem contractors from doing work here. Evanston has had a “competency” test for contractors for 20 years, and he said he’s been advocating for years that Oak Park do the same.
The commission focused its discussion last Friday on what caused the collapse, specifically the removal of a load-bearing piece of the façade, which wasn’t allowed based on the permits that the contractor applied for. The commission plans to pick up the discussion again on Thursday, Sept. 1, at 5:30 p.m., to work up a more specific timeline of how things unfolded at 201-211 Harrison.