Building Codes to Deal With Abandoned Big Boxes

Today from the Streetsblog Network, a report from Charlotte, NC, on the city’s efforts to deal with derelict big box stores. Mary Newsom at The Naked City reports that a proposed new building code to address the problem is in the works:

An abandoned store in Charlotte, NC.

The issue is important for neighborhoods where retailers have left
buildings behind and the buildings sit, empty, for months. (Take a look
at the photo at right, of the old Albemarle Road Upton’s, built in 1978,
photo taken in May.) Sometimes the vacancy occurs because a retail
chain goes belly up; other times the company opens a new store,
typically on a suburban greenfield site, and leaves the older building.
Those vacant and decaying stores have the effect of signaling to other
retailers: “Don’t move here, retail doom awaits!” And the aura of decay
can send a clear signal to other potential investors, too, of an area
in decline.…

To their credit, the city planners have begun
pushing developers of new big box stores to agree to language in the
rezoning agreement that puts some requirements on the retailer if the
store goes vacant: keep up the building, help market it to new tenants,
don’t put a noncompete clause on the property. But that doesn’t give
the city any leverage against abandoned commercial properties built
without any such requirements.

The city
currently requires vacant nonresidential properties to be secure. The
new code would extend to occupied buildings, and would require
properties to be sanitary and safe, too. It would require property
owners to maintain exterior walls, roofs, windows, etc. Broken windows
and doors, holes in roofs and walls, garbage on the site and rodent or
insect infestations would be potential violations. Near as I can tell,
there’s very little opposition to it from anywhere, so it should pass
easily in a few weeks.