City halts illegal demolition of former school
There’s a hole in the side of the Grove Street School where there shouldn’t be one.
It’s a big hole, carved out of the side of the shuttered school by a demolition company’s backhoe early Saturday morning.
But more important, the city says, it’s an illegal one: the building is historic, long under the watchful eye of city preservationists and protected by city laws. No demolition permit was obtained and the city’s Historic District Commission was never approached.
So when the first frenzied reports came that a backhoe was clawing at the school, preservationists and city officials were shocked.
“I was just totally speechless that someone was tearing down Grove Street,” said Jack Gold, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society. “They just went in there on Saturday morning with a dozer and started taking chunks out of the building.”
The assault on the building violated a stop-work order posted on the building’s door last week by the city at the rumor that work might be going on inside the 106-year-old school.
Now the city has gone to court to stop the building’s owners, the Tarro family, proprietors of the nearby A. Tarro & Sons funeral home, from doing any more work on the building. The city might pursue them and the demolition company, Johnston’s Bilray Demolition Co., with fines and other court action.
The Tarros want to knock down the building to create additional parking for their funeral home on Broadway, said Gold, and were trying to make the building structurally unsound before they were halted so the building department would have to condemn it.
“I’m sure that their intention was to render the building structurally unsound, but I’m telling you that building isn’t going anywhere,” Gold said.
Attorney John Coughlin, representing one of the four Tarro children, Patricia A. Tarro, said his client was not aware of the stop-work order, which he said was not posted on the building when the demolition crews arrived Saturday.
He said that an application for demolition had been dropped off with the city on Friday, though he did not know if it was approved.
He said he did not know what his client wanted to use the school site for, but said that its demolition was necessary because it might have been structurally unsound and it was a refuge for the homeless and for drug addicts and he said the owners were tempting fate by allowing it to remain.
“It’s in terrible condition. … I’m surprised we haven’t had a serious incident with the homeless,” Coughlin said, raising the specter of a fire some night.
Anthony F. Cottone, the senior assistant city solicitor handling the case, said it’s irrelevant whether or not the building was structurally sound, whether the homeless gathered there or whether it was a congregation point for drug-users. What matters, he said, is that the demolition was done without a building permit and in violation of a stop-work order.
“I’m at a loss. I tried to get Bilray to tell me how you could start to tear down a building without a building permit,” Cottone said. “You can’t go around doing that. This is not the Wild, Wild West.”
The first rumblings that work was under way at the school came on Sunday, Jan. 28, when residents overheard men working on the pipes inside the building.
The city’s building department was alerted and saw that the inside was being stripped as a precursor to demolition. Because no exterior demolition building permit had been granted, a stop-work order was issued and attached to the front door and preservationists breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the danger had passed.
Then on Saturday morning, Kari Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, was leading a tour of the neighborhood as part of the group’s annual board retreat.
“The tour came to an abrupt stop when a neighbor drove up and announced that the Grove Street School was being demolished,” she said.
“Fortunately, we were nearby the school on our tour and were able to get there in advance of police. We were stunned and dismayed to see the bulldozer was striking the building when we arrived. We told the demolition contractor to stop and after several minutes they did so,” she said.
The police came, and so did Mayor David N. Cicilline, who said that the city would take all possible action against the Tarros and Bilray.
“Let me be clear. These actions demonstrate a flagrant disregard for the law and total disrespect for the residents of our city. We will use all available remedies to hold the individual responsible for the demolition accountable,” Cicilline said. The city posted a police guard at the site from Saturday morning through Monday evening to ensure that no further work occurred.
Monday, the city received an emergency injunction in Superior Court against the Tarros, demanding that they comply with the stop-work order. The injunction was granted by Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia — a graduate of the Grove Street School. The order imposed a 10-day freeze on any work at the school.
Coughlin said the Tarros plan to send an engineer to the property to determine whether it is structurally sound and to figure out whether it was sound before the demolition work was done.
Cottone said that the engineering review will not make a difference; any demolition work would have required a demolition permit and a hearing before the Historic District Commission. No demolition permit was obtained and the Historic District Commission was never contacted.
The two sides will return to court on Feb. 15. Cottone said the city will seek damages from the construction company and the family, a possible fine of $500 a day and possibly restoration of the damage. It will also seek to recoup the cost of the police details.
City Councilman John J. Lombardi, who represents the area and lives on Grove Street, said neighbors are very upset with the Tarros, particularly Stephen Tarro, because he had promised last week that no demolition work would be done on the building.
“They’re certainly angry at the funeral home because he made some representations about what was going to happen,” Lombardi said.
“He promised me, he promised… several neighborhood people that it was not happening.”
The Grove Street School was built in 1901 to deal with the massive influx of immigrants throughout the city. It was closed in 1975 as Providence saw its population shrinking. Richard E. Tarro, a former state representative from Providence, bought the building at auction from the city in 1982 for $10,000 for use as a parking lot. On his death in 2001, it was divided among the Tarro children, Patricia, Stephen, Richard and Michael.
In 2002, the Providence Preservation Society placed the building on its list of 10 most endangered buildings, noting that it “retains elegant architectural forms like brick quoins and [an ornamental] cornice.”
In the last few years there has been significant talk about renovating the building turning it into condominiums, and in the last few weeks, some in the neighborhood have promoted renovating it and reusing it as a school to make up for the pending closing of West Broadway Elementary School.
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