Old Town Hall inspection – HAZMAT suits and into the darkness

The old Town Hall is for sale – but what price for what product is at question for town officials. Royal Examiner Photos/Roger Bianchini

On Friday morning, August 23, members of Town staff, Interim Mayor Matt Tederick and Councilman Chris Holloway ventured inside the old Town Hall on an inspection tour. As readers may recall, around 2014 the Town traded the then empty old Town Hall, circa 1935, for the also empty and deteriorating Afton Inn, circa 1868, in an effort to have the EDA market one of the town’s most prominent and oldest downtown buildings for renovation or redevelopment.

At the time, Tederick was one of the Town’s harshest critics of that effort. We wondered how he felt about the swap in retrospect, now that he was inside the town governmental apparatus, rather than outside it.

Arriving to photograph the tour at 9:30 a.m. just after the EDA Board of Directors had adjourned to what would be a nearly three-hour closed session we found our town officials clothed in semi or perhaps mini-HAZMAT protective clothing, including hard hats, ventilators and plastic covering of clothes and shoes.

Uh oh, what are we getting into …?

“You sure you don’t want a ventilator Tederick asked your intrepid reporter as we prepared to enter.

Interim Mayor Matt Tederick, left, offers your humble reporter one last shot at a ventilator before entering.

“Nah, this’ll be a quick in and out for me – few pictures, BANG, I’m gone,” I reasoned as the mid-summer rain began to fall at the back entrance.

Of course he didn’t tell me there was suspected mold inside until we were in the basement viewing standing water and oil around the furnace and an apparently recent paint job on possibly mold-entrenched walls.

“I’ll see you later, I’m outta here – could you point that flashlight this way,” I asked the mayor. However the mayor graciously led us up the stairs into the light, air and light rain.

Above, standing water and oil surround the basement furnace; below, stairway to, if not heaven, at least the light and air …

As we made our way back to EDA headquarters not realizing we had another two hours to kill before the open session would be re-adjourned, we promised a call back for more details on the inspection.

And by mid-afternoon we were free to call Tederick for those details.

He told us the Town is permitted to ask for inspections periodically as part of the contract with owner Frank Barros, a Northern Virginia developer who purchased the Afton Inn around 2006-07 with some grandiose redevelopment plans that were derailed initially by council itself. That derailment came when the town’s elected officials of that era, in their infinite electoral wisdom decided to sue its own Board of Zoning Appeals for granting Barros an exemption to a long-standing, perhaps ancient, code stating that no building downtown can be built taller than the Warren County Courthouse.

It seemed like a good idea at the time – stimulating redevelopment of the derelict Afton Inn across the street from the new Front Royal Town Hall and Warren County Courthouse.

Barros’ plan, which included an interior water fountain, would have raised the Afton building about 10 feet above the courthouse bell tower. Needless to say the Barros-Town re-developmental marriage went south after that; followed in short order by the housing-market crash of 2008.

Welcome to the future, and two floundering, still awaiting redevelopment buildings against the backdrop of the EDA financial scandal.

Tederick said council authorized the town attorney to send a letter to the owner requesting an inspection – “We sent them three dates, they picked the first one. They were accommodating; it’s not an adversarial situation. We want it in good condition and to help the owner get it occupied.”
Staff involved in the inspection included the town manager, town attorney, clerk of council, town engineer, public works director, and planning director, in addition to the mayor and Councilman Holloway, himself a builder by trade.

“It was my first time in since it closed,” Tederick said.

Council made the decision to abandoned town hall when its governmental apparatus outgrew the space constraints of the building constructed in the mid-1930s and if our memory serves us, initially utilized as a fire house.

“It was sad, there were very little improvements,” Tederick said in the wake of the inspection, adding, “Most distressing was the amount of water around the furnace. I would say the furnace is ruined. There was standing water and oil – and a strong odor of oil and mildew … and there appeared to be mold.”

“Does anyone know what mold smells like,” I may have asked earlier as I exited the building trying to blow any potential mold spores out of my nasal passages.

Tederick said his attention was drawn to the status of the building on June 8 while attending an event at a nearby Methodist Church and saw what he called a “commercial grade” hose pumping water out of the basement onto the ground outside.

That is what prompted the request for an inspection, Tederick said.

“I think it needs a fair amount of work to be occupied. With our commitment to downtown – we’re not excited at a plan to see it sit and let it deteriorate,” the interim mayor observed.

The Town is also taking an aggressive stance toward re-engaging movement on the Afton Inn, which stopped in the wake of the EDA civil suit listing “Afton Inn Embezzlements”, though not by the developer, but rather allegedly by the former EDA executive director.

That former EDA executive director coincidentally found herself back in jail about 3-1/2 hours after our conversation with Tederick about the situation involving the two buildings swapped to facilitate EDA overseen redevelopment of the older of the two, now owned by the EDA on behalf of the Town.

While considering reacquiring ownership of the Afton Inn outright from the EDA, the Town does not appear too interested in acquiring any debt for redevelopment work that occurred prior to the work stoppage on the Afton Inn in the wake of the March 26 filing of the EDA civil suit.

These are indeed strange times surrounding economic development and municipal oversight of it in Front Royal and Warren County – HAZMAT suits on order …

Okay, where’s that last ventilator …