Cotter building roof collapses; Price's market, hospital also to be razed

Cathy Allred

Like fragile dominoes poised and ready to topple, three historic buildings in Lehi are coming down.

Council members voted Tuesday authorizing staff to complete the demolition of the old Cotter building on Main and Center streets after its roof caved in Saturday, and to proceed with the demolition of the building directly to the west, what used to be Price's IGA Food Market. Lehi city owns both buildings.

The city also gave the go-ahead for officials to proceed with preparations to demolish the condemned Lehi Hospital building on State Street.

City risk manager Scott Sampson said the condition of the hospital building is similar to what the Cotter building was. He reported that they could shine a light at the brickwork where the mortar had disintegrated and see through to the other side of the exterior wall.

"It is in worse shape than that one [the Cotter building] was," said city administrator Jamie Davidson at the meeting. "We would like to tear that [the hospital] down."

He said the south wall on the upper floor has blown down.

Officials also have determined the Food Market building is unsafe because it shares its east wall with the Cotter building and they want to get the area cleaned up quickly.

"The other reason why we feel a little bit of urgency on this is we need to secure the walkway with the weekend coming and business at Porter's Place and Legacy Center traffic," Sampson said on Tuesday.

Unlike prior demolitions of historic buildings in Lehi, the demolition of the Cotter building, also known as the original site of Cash's Western Auto, was unplanned. Saturday at about 3 p.m., an employee at nearby Deadwood Pawn reported hearing a crash.

"We assume that is when the roof collapsed," said Fire Battalion Chief Rick Howard.

A call came in to the fire department at approximately 7 p.m. Police and Howard arrived at the site about the same time.

They found that the roof, which had been holding the walls of the building together, had collapsed and the eastern parapet, a faux brick wall built 5 feet above where the roof had been, was leaning over the sidewalk.

They secured the site, closed down Center Street near the area, and called Sampson. The weather was cold, it was raining and a storm front was moving into the valley.

At 9 p.m., Sampson determined the safety of the community was compromised and the parapet would need to come down. Contracting Peck Construction, the city began the process of removing the unstable parapet.

"Once we started taking down the parapet we recognized the building was completely unstable," Howard said during an interview. "There was no way we could leave any part of the building up because once that wall started leaning the whole building needed to be demolished."

They found with the roof gone, nothing was holding the structure together. The only thing holding the walls up were the walls.

"I would say that [the eastern parapet] weighed a good thousand pounds," Howard said. "Had that section fallen, the whole wall could have fallen, too."

Three of the walls were knocked down by 11 p.m. but the eastern wall was left standing since without it the adjoining building would lose its support.

"Once he started, the walls just began crumbling," Howard said of the demolition.

"One thing we learned from the demolition was that there is not very much holding those buildings together and had there been a seismic event we wouldn't have fared very well," Davidson said.

Lehi city owns both buildings on Main Street. When they were purchased in 2007, a request for proposals was put out on developing the site while preserving the history of the area.

As recently as two weeks prior to the collapse of the roof of the Cotter building, city staff had talked to an interested developer about developing the site.

"The project is not dead, but obviously things are moving a little slower than when the economy was moving at a brisk pace," Davidson said. "We're interested in preserving our heritage, and yet we are interested in preserving the safety of our community."