Mayor Don Gage’s tough stance on fixing up downtown’s unreinforced masonry buildings is paying off, according to City staff.
Since a 4-3 City Council vote in June that enforced liens on URM property owners who remained noncompliant in upgrading their buildings to state safety regulations, 12 of the 18 building owners in downtown have come to the table.
California’s URM Law requires cities located in the “seismic zone 4” – which runs the length of the California Coast – to inventory their unreinforced masonry buildings deemed structurally unfit to survive high magnitude earthquakes. Under the law, cities must report the findings to the state and work on getting the buildings up to code.
“It’s a team effort all the way across the board, between building owners, City staff, and Council. We’re really trying to address one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue facing our downtown,” said Gilroy Development Center Manager Lee Butler.
It’s a big deal because of a City ordinance that demands vacant URM buildings must be retrofitted before they can be occupied by a business – a stipulation that has led to numerous empty URM buildings downtown. Once these buildings are retrofitted, Gilroy can begin to fill the lonely edifices with viable local businesses, Butler said.
Five owners have completed the permit process, and two more have already begun construction, including Ashford’s Heirlooms at 7547 Monterey St. and 7477 Monterey St., which is a vacant building next to the Garlic Festival Association office.
“We’re excited we’ve got some owners stepping up to the plate,” Butler said.
In addition to those seven, five more owners have recently expressed interest in remedying their building’s issues, leaving just six owners who the City has not yet been able to reach, Butler said.
In the past, encouraging and incentivizing the building owners into moving ahead with the retrofit work – which includes securing URM walls to the roof and floors in multi-story buildings, bracing parapets and repairing or removing façades – has been less than successful, Gage said. He is thrilled that the City has seen some progress in this area.
Councilwoman Terri Aulman, who voted in favor of the strong measures to spur construction downtown, is also pleased with the City’s results so far.
“We took a very strong stand that needed to be taken. I don’t think of it as a threat, it was more like ‘we’re not going to play games anymore,’” Aulman said. “We have got citizens looking at our downtown and they want this and that for it. And we need to take them seriously and see what we can do to fix it up.”
Council’s recent vote means that URM owners who fail to comply with structural retrofits will have to start paying monthly fines of about $1,500.
“We can really help revitalize the downtown through addressing this issue,” Butler said. “Without the owner’s desire to make their building safer and to meet the requirement of the ordinance, we are not able to do it.”
Seven of the 18 listed building owners have mailing addresses outside of Gilroy; the list of addresses stretch from Hesperia – near San Bernardino in the Mojave Desert – to San Francisco.
The City covers the costs for the permitting process and inspection fees to incentivize owners to come forward, Butler said.
Downtown still has a long way to go before all 18 URM buildings are up to code.
“We’re initiating discussions but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. We’re excited we’ve made some progress,” Butler said.
