Oshkosh inspectors move to demolish gay bar

The Oshkosh Northwestern reported today that the City's Oshkosh Inspection Services issued an order to "demolish" the gay bar, known as the 1226 Club (or "CA's 1226"):

"The complaint was there was work going on without the required building permits," Dannhoff said. "We issued (the demolition order) based on the breadth of depreciation or deterioration that we found. If it had just been the siding or just been the windows, we would have probably issued municipal citations for failure to comply. But this is clearly a situation where there is a large and expensive scope of work to be done."

You would think that this place was a dump for the city to declare that the building wasn't salvageable, but is that the case:

Inspectors issued a compliance notice on June 6 and requested a detailed itemization of repairs and improvements and individual costs for each task before inspectors would approve a building permit for the improvements.

On Sept. 10, Vander Velden and Nikolai filed a bid sheet from Sellcrest Construction of Neenah that indicated it would repair the problems for an overall cost of $18,300. Dannhoff did not issue a permit, though, because the cost estimate did not conform to written requests made in the June 6 compliance notice. He said he expects the repairs would cost at least $50,000.

"The company didn't do a very good job of providing the specifics we requested," Dannhoff said. "It was generic in nature and we explained that to the owner when he presented it. And I was not confident that it addressed 100 percent of the issues we presented after inspection."

So the owners found a construction firm that would do the needed work for $18,500, but the city refused to issue a building permit because the bid was too low. The owners get a "demolition order" because they made improvements without a permit, a permit that the city refused to issue because they were going to get the work done cheap.

I don't know if you've driven down Oshkosh Ave just across the bridge by the river recently, but CA's certainly doesn't stand out from the rest of the buildings along that stretch. In fact, its neighboring buildings look pretty junky. For the city to order a business to be demolished when they've already gotten a bid to make the repairs, all within less than a year, but turn around and tolerate certain other colossal eye sores...

Something here smells fishy.