SIte Evaluation

Phase one of CERCLA, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, has three parts. These parts are, pre-site evaluation, physical on-site inspection, and a written judgment. There is limited sampling in this step so you cannot confirm or deny the presence of hazardous materials in past issues, only determine what is currently there. In phase one it determines site history, deed notations, interviews with past and current owners. Some issues one could discover are site odors, soil discoloration, vegetative stress, soil disturbance, stream or surface water impacts, and any obvious hazardous material impacts.

                While researching the Flower Shoppe building on Union Street I could not find a lot of information, but it is believed that there has always been a restaurant or a business in that current building with a motel/ apartment above it so there would be no hazardous tanks underneath the property. I researched some more and on the Athens County Auditors website you can figure out what type of property was there before the Flower Shoppe. The current structure is unstable and will have to be torn down as is but I would recommend buying it after they rebuild it. Although the buildings will be rebuilt in the same way and with relatively the same materials as deemed by the Historical Society as a historical district, the fire safety and codes will be brought to the modern day level which will make it a much safer building. The original building was from pre 1900’s so there was no sprinkler system and many of the fire alarms batteries were dead or simply missing at the time of the fire. Chipotle survived the fire because it was a more modern building with more fire safety codes implemented into the building. At first I thought the only place to get a satellite image was Google images but those are not current, after doing a quick Google search I found various websites that are available to purchase satellite images of buildings.

                Some observations I had on site were: there is no fire hydrant nearby, there is a steam vent, water meter, sewer manhole, surrounded by old buildings, there is a lot of water damage to the building due to the firemen, there is a barbed wire fence at the back and part of it is hanging over the edge about to fall off, there are various exposed wires and pipes. As I was examining the building an employee of a nearby business told me we had to leave because of the structure is unsafe and could fall down. The Flower Shoppe is next to old buildings which could give the possibility of renovations over the years. The sewer is municipal so it is city owned. There are a lot of problems with the current property so I would not recommend purchasing the property, possibly when the building is done being rebuilt but you may have to deal with future problems since is it part of a historical district which could have certain coding laws.

http://www.mapmart.com/Products/SatelliteImagery/SatelliteImageMaps.aspx

http://www.athenscountyauditor.org/