… This is a property that for many years has not been safe, and may still well not be safe." "They are asking to essentially take their word for it that house is now safe," Edwards said.
What if, he asked, the Kattars' back out of their agreement with Schaak? Will the process be reset yet again and a nuisance property continue as a nuisance? There have been nine legislative hearings since September 2019 in an effort to give them time to clean up the property, he said. "Otherwise, you're demolishing a house that doesn't need to be demolished," he said.Įdwards, the assistant city attorney, said city officials are not unsympathetic to the couple's struggles. Next door to their house, workers were busy renovating a brick story-and-a-half home.īecause the house has now been adequately cleaned and no longer poses a hazard, Anderson said the city has an obligation to stop the demolition process and let the Kattars' agreement with Schaak be completed. On Wednesday, neighbors across the street, who did not want to be named, said they would rather see the home improved. Neither John nor Mary Jo Kattar responded to a request to be interviewed. Values of other homes on the block range from nearly $300,000 to more than $450,000. The couple continue to pay property taxes - nonhomestead - of more than $7,000 a year, including additional assessments because the home is vacant. While Schaak would not divulge the financial details of his agreement with the Kattars, Ramsey County records show the house has a 2021 estimated market value of $299,600. "The neighbors don't want to see one of those McMansions going up," he said of the three-bedroom home he envisions renovating to include an upper level master suite. Schaak, who moved to Stillwater in 2008, said he was recently at a holiday party in his old neighborhood. He said he has renovated "six or seven" vacant properties in St. Joe Schaak, who once lived across the street from the Kattars and whose business includes rehabbing and selling old and nuisance homes, inspected the house and said it could "become an amazing home for a young family."īut under terms of a joint venture agreement, Schaak won't take control of the property unless the courts or the city cease efforts to demolish the house. Then, in February, the couple cleared out the house - and found a prospective buyer. 6, 2021, the state Court of Appeals affirmed St. Through last summer and fall, officials said, the Kattars never cleaned the house to a point where it could be inspected. In December 2020, the City Council declared the house a dangerous structure and unanimously voted for it to be demolished. In March 2020, the Kattars said the threat of COVID-19 slowed their efforts even more. Still, the house remained packed with stuff. What followed were letters and hearings and extensions and even referrals to programs to help Mary Jo Kattar with her hoarding problem.
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Then, in September 2019, the city notified the couple that the home was a nuisance property and that it could be demolished if its code violations weren't corrected.
"It's too late," he told Ramsey County District Judge Laura Nelson.įor 12 years after the Kattars vacated the house, no other action was taken.
"No one."īut the city, which condemned the house in 2007 and has since 2019 repeatedly extended deadlines to clean it up enough for it to be inspected, cannot simply take the Kattars' word that the house is now safe, Assistant City Attorney Anthony Edwards said. "Who wins when there is a hole in the ground? Who wins when a 100-year-old house is demolished?" Anderson said. A former neighbor of Mary Jo and John Kattar has an agreement to restore and sell the home if the order to tear it down is lifted. On Thursday, their attorney, Matt Anderson, asked a Ramsey County judge to prevent the city from razing the home at 1904 Princeton Av., saying the dangerous conditions city inspectors have continually cited no longer exist.
Paul from tearing down their 100-year-old home. A Macalester-Groveland couple who struggled for years with a hoarding problem are hoping a judge will block the city of St.
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