East Side Chill Thru Condemned

An old drive through on Wayne Avenue is being officially condemned by the city of Zanesville.

Cracking on the property has pulled the East Side Chill Thru off its foundation. Tim Smith is the chief building official for the city. He said he was alerted to the crack this morning and promptly inspected the property. Along with the city engineer, he determined that it is no longer safe for people to be on the property.

“Obviously we’ve got some settlement going on here, but at this point it’s not endangering the roadbed,” Smith said. “Obviously it’s done significant damage to the building which we’re going to condemn that.”

Smith has contacted the owner of the building to alert him that the building is being condemned. American Electric Power has been called to shut off power to the building. However, Smith doesn’t feel a demolition is feasible at this time.

“At this point, I’m not ordering a demolition order on it because like I said, I don’t want to have any equipment on here doing anything at this point,” he said. “We’re just going to continue to monitor it and as something happens, we’ll address the issue then.”

While walking around the building, we could see large cracks that have developed in the ground. The owner has schedule a p[property auction for later this month,  but Smith said if anyone buys the property, they won’t be able to use it as the city will be posting no trespassing signs.