Rochester, New York, building is potential demo candidate

The city council of Rochester, New York, is considering approving a demolition order for a nine-story building the legislative body said does not appear to have a path forward toward redevelopment.

According to a late August online article by the Rochester Business Journal (RBJ), the near-downtown Richford Hotel building on Chestnut Street has been vacant since 2011. It reportedly is owned by a company called Midtown Reborn LLC.

The more than 100-year-old structure prompted the closing of nearby streets last year when parts of its temporary cladding blew off during a period of high winds.

The demolition order is being considered by the city’s government “if the owner doesn’t remedy code and safety violations,” says the newspaper.

A notice sent to Midtown Reborn LLC in late August refers to the building as “dangerous or unsafe and/or a public nuisance because it has been abandoned and the owner has failed to correct property code violations,” according to the RBJ.

According to the Rochester Subway website, the building started out in 1915 as the $1 per night Hotel Richford for Men, and remained an affordable hotel site into the 1960s.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, it hosted a bank and office tenants, and by the early 20^th century attracted investors who attempted to upgrade the building, but those attempts “ended in the developer losing their investment and the property falling into foreclosure,” according to the website.

A blogger on the website, who posted photos claimed to have been taken inside the Richford Hotel structure earlier this decade, says the property is unsecured and describes the building as “a total wreck.”

The notice of hearing sent by the city of Rochester to the building’s owner is described by the RBJ as part of the city’s effort to move the demolition process forward.

The newspaper quotes a Rochester city department commissioner as saying, “We’re not looking to ruthlessly go through the city and destroy peoples’ property, but we have a problem in the city with these vacant properties being a burden on the community. We can’t allow them to exist over a period of time.”

A potential next stage in determining the building’s fate will be a late September hearing held by the city of Rochester.

The city employee quoted by the RBJ, Dana Miller, says a owner typically is given a period of several weeks “to identify what they’re going to do and when they can do it by” in regard to staving off a demolition order.

Miller also estimates the “building is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to demolish.”