For months, the charred remains of a Whiteland home and business have looked the same, prompting complaints from residents.
In September, a fire destroyed the property at 4621 N. Graham Road, after the owner, John Fulling, set a fire before committing suicide, the coroner’s office said at the time. Since then, the burned-out building has remained unchanged, despite the town declaring the building unsafe and requiring it to be repaired or torn down, Whiteland Planning Director Joe Csikos said.
After getting multiple complaints from residents and being concerned about the look of the property on a busy route in and out of Whiteland, the town is now looking at cleaning up the property itself, Csikos said.
Complicating efforts to get the site cleaned up is uncertainty over who owns the property and is responsible for maintaining it. The property was in foreclosure at the time of the fire, with mortgages of $76,000 and $31,000, according to court records. Currently, the two lenders are disputing how the property should be sold and how the proceeds of that sale will be managed, according to court records.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThe town declared the building unsafe and sent out notices to all potential owners about a month ago, requiring them to tear down or repair the property, Csikos said. Whiteland follows state rules for determining whether a building is unsafe. This property, which was severely damaged by the fire, is structurally unsound and is a public nuisance, he said.
When the town sent out the initial notice that the building is unsafe and needs to be repaired, letters went to every person or lender connected to the property, Csikos said.
But the town hasn’t received a response from anyone, meaning another round of notices will be sent out before the town considers beginning the process to demolish the building and clean up the site, he said.
With the amount of traffic on Graham Road, the site is one that the town wants to get cleaned up sooner than later, Csikos said. But how long the process will take isn’t known because having the town tear down a building is rare, and Csikos has never done it before, he said.
Unsafe building rules allow communities to require property owners to fix up buildings that have fallen into a state of disrepair, or allow a community to use tax dollars to pay for the repairs or demolition and charge that cost to the property owner via a lien, which would have to be paid when the property was sold.
That’s a step that Greenwood, Franklin and Johnson County have all taken in recent years.
Last year, Greenwood tore down a building at 398 Smart St., which took about nine months. The most prominent building in Franklin that the city stepped in to demolish was the former Red Carpet Inn near Interstate 65, which took about six months from the demolition order to when the city tore the building down. Johnson County has used its unsafe buildings rules to prompt repairs to an abandoned home on U.S. 31.
