Owner of Condemned Home Loses Appeal

A Lakewood man appealed the city’s recent decision to condemn his Gladys Avenue home after building and housing officials determined it to be a safety hazard.

And on Thursday, the city’s board of building standards denied his appeal.

“It is likely the city will have to demolish the home,” said Dru Siley, the city’s director of building and housing.

Last month, the city of Lakewood declared the home at 1214 Gladys Avenue a “nuisance property” after some serious structural flaws were found.

The walls are bowing out. The rear addition is detaching and falling from the home. In one night, the roof collapsed after a structural beam in the basement buckled.

Those are just a few of the reasons for the city's nuisance declaration.

“We’ve got kids who live next door,” Kevin Butler, the city’s law director, recently told Lakewood Patch.

The police took the homeowner into custody for numerous citations — and in an effort to remove him from the home at 1214 Gladys Avenue.

The windows and doors were boarded up and the property was declared a nuisance under city ordinance.

According to the nuisance declaration, there have been several inspections of the property.

“The owner failed, neglected, or refused to comply with previous correction notices,” according to the filing. “This structure has been deemed unsafe to occupy.”

“Every so often we have to issue a nuisance to a home, and a lot of times we have to knock them down,” said Butler. “This is an unusual one because it’s not already vacant and abandoned. Most of them are bank-owned and are vacant and abandoned.”