Dorri Partain 
Assistant Editor 

An apartment building at 3236 Anderson that experienced a first-floor wall collapse in January has been declared as uninhabitable by the City’s Dangerous Buildings department.

In a situation related in an Opinion piece published in our February 14 issue, (If a building wall in the city collapses, doesn’t anyone hear it?) the wall collapse not only affected residents still living in the building but also the property next door, with building debris covering the ground just outside the property’s back door.

The Northeast News was informed by Northeast resident Joseph Quinn, who contacted us following multiple calls to the 311 Action Center, building’s owner, and the Kansas City Health Department’s Healthy Homes inspection office while the building continued to crumble. Quinn owns and rents the house just next door to the apartments.

When Quinn contacted Healthy Homes to report the building’s condition, he was informed that because he did not live in the building, he was not able to request an inspection and his tenant, a single mother with three children, in danger if the building crumbled further, was not able to request an inspection either.

According to the 311 Parcel Viewer, a web page that provides access to open code cases, the building was declared dangerous on Tuesday, February 27.  At that time, the building was still occupied by at least three families according to Sherae Honeycutt, press secretary for the City Manager’s office.

Honeycutt explained that the process in reporting the dangerous situation would have been easier if the property owner, Birdcage Enterprises LLC, had registered the property with the Healthy Homes program, a requirement for all rental properties in the Kansas City city limits.

Once declared dangerous, the property owner has 48 hours to obtain their own demolition contract or the city will bid it out.  Barring any delays due to the bidding process, weather, or other circumstances, Honeycutt stated the building should be demolished or in the process of by March 15.

Upon learning of the building’s upcoming demolition, Quinn said, “I’m stunned. I thought the owner would try to shore it up or something. You could tell it was a nice building at one time.”