Three Laramie businesses located on the 400 block of Second Street were back in business less than a week after a partial collapse left the safety of the public in question.
The three businesses closed due to the collapse were Prairie Rose Café, Undercover Bed and Spa and Hero Depot. Hero Depot reopened on last Wednesday, while Prairie Rose Café and Undercover Bed and Spa reopened on Friday.
Yelton Structural Engineering of Casper determined “the buildings were deemed to pose no immediate threat,” according to a City of Laramie press release.
The company was inspecting the buildings to ensure they were safe to inhabit, not attempting to discern the cause of the partial collapse.
“Yelton was attempting to determine if there were any structural deficiencies that posed a threat to occupants in the building, the Hart building, as well as the buildings next to it, and also whether there was a danger of imminent additional collapse, partial or whole,” City Manager Janine Jordan said.
Hero Depot’s owner, Ryan Kiser, said the city, Laramie Main Street Alliance and local business owners responded quickly to the collapse.
“Just being closed for one day can be a detriment to any business,” Kiser said. “It is a struggle to keep the business open on some months, so any time you have to be closed for a few days is really bad, but I thought the collapse was handled very well by city officials and the Laramie business community.”
Sean Hart, owner of Hart’s Alley, the building that partially collapsed last weekend, said the city failed to respond to requests he made for an engineer to come assess the structural integrity of his building after he noticed some damages. He claims the damages came from a construction company, Reiman Corp., tearing up the foundation near a shared wall between Hart’s Alley and the construction site they were working on.
Joe Vitale, Laramie city councilor, said the city should have addressed the problem quicker.
“I think the city dropped the ball,” Vitale said. “The city manager was gone, but I don’t care where you are, you have some responsibility to respond to emergencies.”
David Derragon, assistant city manager, said there was no sense of urgency or mention of damaged foundation or cracks in a wall in the message Hart left for the city manager’s office. Derragon also said Hart did not answer when he was called back, and Hart didn’t have an answering machine set up for Derragon to leave a message.
Janine Jordan, Laramie city manager, provided the Branding Iron with a copy of the message Hart left on June 1 at 2:00 p.m., and there is no mention of the structural integrity of his building.
Dave Paulekas, Laramie city mayor, also disagrees with Hart’s story of the collapse.
“My understanding of what Sean has characterized is not accurate, and it is substantiated by the voice recording on the phone,” Paulekas said. “This is a private dispute between two landowners. Our only responsibility is to ensure that these buildings are safe and that there is no possibility of harm to the public. In other words, our responsibility is to our public.”
Jordan also said no member of city engineering is qualified to inspect property to determine if it is safe to inhabit.
“No member of city staff inspected his structure, nor would they be qualified to do so,” Jordan said. “There was never any consultation between city staff and Mr. Hart regarding the structural integrity of his building. Our engineers are not structural engineers, and they are not qualified to make any determinations regarding the structural integrity of a building.”
Vitale points to the lack of structural engineers on city staff as one cause of what he sees as a slow response.
“The city doesn’t have any structural engineers to do the investigation,” Vitale said. “That slowed the city down.”
Defending the city, Jordan said it isn’t common for a city to have structural engineers on staff to inspect private property.
“It is almost unheard of for a municipality to employ structural engineers, especially structural engineers that would be responsible for judging the integrity of privately owned property,” Jordan said.
