Sedalia Board to hear demolition appeal for buildings on West Main Street
Jazsmin Halliburton
EDITOR’S NOTE: The meeting was moved to Oct. 22.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Sedalia Board of Appeals will meet on Wednesday to review the city’s dangerous building notice and demolition order, as the property owners argue that their properties are not in danger of collapsing.
The city has been actively collecting bids to demolish the buildings owned by Dana Melton and Travis Dixon at 207 and 209 W. Main St. Sedalia is looking to preserve other buildings that could be damaged in if those two were to collapse.
The city’s bids for demolition will end on Oct. 29 and the city council will review the bids in November.
A judge in July ruled the city has the ability to order a building to be demolished within its city limits.
Chief Building Official Bryan Kopp had determined the building at 207 West Main St. needed to be demolished to “protect the public,” court documents say. The city has described the building as being in “a state of collapse.”
However, an engineer hired by Melton and Dixon said in a report that the buildings can be saved and that the foundation was damaged from sidewalk work done by the city in 2022.
Melton and Dixon are asking the Sedalia Board of Appeals to go over and pause the demolition order while their evidence is considered.
According to the City of Sedalia, the owners submitted a proposal via their attorney in August. Melton and Dixon requested that the city hire and pay demolition contractors, reimburse the owners for engineering and attorney fees, permit the owners’ private engineer to oversee the work on-site and after demolition, backfill the lot to prepare it for future construction, among other conditions.
The city rejected the proposal, arguing that it shifted responsibility to the city and would have used public funds to improve a privately owned property.