ThisWeek CW 03/07/2013
An overgrown and abandoned carriage house on property owned by Dick and Betty Weiser will be demolished, with the approval of the Canal Winchester Landmarks Commission.
Todd Weiser, who represented the family at the commission’s Feb. 25 meeting, said an application to raze the structure was submitted in October of last year but personal matters required action to be delayed until now.
“My dad said that he had heard from the neighbors that they didn’t like the building and wanted it gone,” Weiser said. “He didn’t care much about what happened with the building, but he’d got it from someone in the neighborhood that the consensus was that they wanted it gone and we wanted to conform to what they want.”
Landmarks Commission Chairman Patrick Lynch said the Weisers’ home, built around 1870, is listed on the National Registry of Historic Properties but the carriage house isn’t a part of that historic inventory.
The structure has been overgrown with vines since he was a child, Todd Weiser said.
“Supposedly there’s still a carriage in there,” he said. “It was originally a carriage house, but I’ve never actually been in it because it’s always been in this shape since I was a child.”
According to Weiser and Patrick Lynch, local barn restorer Pete Lynch looked at the structure to see if there were any chance of saving it, but his recommendation was that it come down and whatever lumber that can be salvaged should be.
“I have had some people who asked if we’d consider saving it, so Pete Lynch took a look at it and said there’s nothing to save,” Weiser said. “You could probably put $25,000 into reroofing and residing it and that still isn’t even touching the foundation or interior. Right now, there’s skunks living in it.”
The Landmarks Commission voted unanimously to allow the structure to be torn down.
“If you take those vines off that building, it’ll probably collapse on itself,” Patrick Lynch said.
Weiser said after the demolition is completed, he anticipates that the alleyway easement once used for the carriage house will be considered abandoned and the family will then ask for a zoning change related to that and a permit to construct a fence.
“But that’s a future thing to deal with,” Weiser said.