Like fragile dominoes poised ready to topple, Lehi lost two historic buildings last week and stands to lose one more.

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.

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

Risk Manager Scott Sampson said the condition of the hospital building is similar to what the Cotter building was. He reported 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 was,” said Davidson at the meeting. “We would like to tear that down.”

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

Officials have also 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 businesses at Porter’s Place and Legacy Center traffic,” Sampson said.

Unlike prior demolitions of historic buildings in Lehi, the demolition Saturday of the Cotter building, also known as the original site of Cash’s Western Auto, had been unplanned. That afternoon, an employee at Deadwood Pawn reported to city officials hearing a crash at about 3 p.m.

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

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

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

They secured the site, Center Street was closed down near the area, and they 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 (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,” said Davidson.

Lehi City owns both buildings on Main Street having purchased them in 2007 and had put out a request for proposals 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.”