Construction fencing appeared around the vacant Brookfield Moose property at 4020 DuBois Blvd. recently, but demolition of the structure isn’t imminent, despite some safety concerns.
Keith Sbiral, assistant village manager and director of the village’s Building and Planning Department, said he ordered its owner, Fifth-Third Bank, “to secure the building one way or another. It’s not structurally sound. Our goal is to have them demolish the building.”
But Fifth-Third Bank, which acquired the property in a foreclosure action earlier this year, has not given the village a timetable for demolition. Failure to do so in the short term, said Sbiral, will mean some sort of property enforcement action against the bank.
“If they won’t give us a time frame, we’ll start ticketing,” Sbiral said.
Sbiral said the bank is trying to pull together cost estimates for demolition. He’d like to know the bank’s decision shortly.
“In the next few weeks we either get an answer or we’ll start giving out citations,” Sbiral said.
The property is currently on the market for $425,000. That figure represents a 68 percent decline in value since 2005, when a real estate developer purchased the land for $1.35 million.
At first the developer planned a six-story condominium building, and later floated a townhome development. Both plans languished, however, and the bank started the foreclosure process in May 2009.
The Brookfield Moose property is part of a special commercial zoning district bounded by DuBois on the east, Eberly Avenue on the west, Ogden Avenue on the south and the railroad right of way on the north.
That district is also home to a long-vacant former car dealership property at Eberly and Ogden, which is owned by the village, and a blighted, abandoned commercial/residential building at 9508 Ogden Ave.
The village enlisted the services of a real estate broker in May 2010 to market the property and attract a fast-food franchise to the site. The village board last month extended that agreement to Nov. 30.
– Bob Uphues
