Matthew Coon, Jamestown deputy fire chief, is pictured Friday with Crystal Surdyk, city director of development, on Crescent Street at the site of the former Jamestown-Royal Upholstery Corp. plant. The property was destroyed in a fire June 25. P-J photo by Eric Tichy

Keeping close tabs on Jamestown’s aging building stock can be difficult even in the most ideal of circumstances.

But throw in a pandemic that has kept housing courts closed and the difficulties in tracking down property owners for code enforcement, it can be downright frustrating.

The June 25 fire that destroyed the former Jamestown-Royal Upholstery Corp. building on Crescent Street has shed light on the complex task city officials sometimes face to ensure long-dormant properties are maintained and — maybe one day — returned to productive use.

“It was devastating to see,” Crystal Surdyk, city director of development, said of the fire, which leveled the former furniture manufacturing plant and later ruled arson.

Surdyk confirmed the property faced numerous code violations and noted that court action was being sought against its owner, a limited liability corporation. However, remediation efforts were stifled due to the pandemic that closed the local courts. “It was delayed because of the pandemic,” she said. “The timing was not in our favor.”

Jamestown police said two teenage girls entered the Crescent Street building and left shortly after the fire began. Surdyk said the owner did take steps to secure the property over the last couple of years, but acknowledged the challenge in keeping out those determined to get in.

“Unfortunately, people find a way,” she said. “It was a large, old industrial building, and they’re really hard to maintain.”

The city keeps an evolving list of properties, both residential and commercial, that are vacant to ensure they don’t fall victim to vandals or arson. The Department of Development works in collaboration with the Jamestown Police and Fire departments as well as Board of Public Utilities in keeping an eye on such structures.

Timothy Jackson, Jamestown police chief, referenced that “working relations and improved communication” with the Department of Development whenever officers come across buildings that need to be secured or appear to be unsafe.

“We have an excellent relationship with the (Department of Development) and call them 24 hours a day, seven days a week whenever necessary for them to assess a structure,” Jackson said. “Ms. Surdyk’s team has been aggressive with addressing the number of dilapidated properties in the city and other housing violations. The (Department of Development) has encouraged us to call whenever there is a question regarding a property. The Department of Development and JPD often discuss distressed properties and share information. It is a collaborative effort.”

Efforts to limit properties from becoming distressed usually start with code enforcement. But with housing courts likely closed until next year, violations are backing up and making that route less ideal at the moment.

“There are things that we do code enforcement-wise already, but we’ve come across a lot of challenges in the last year with not having the ability to take these cases to court,” Surdyk said. “We’ve really lost our authority to really enforce some of these code enforcement cases, whether it’s residential or it’s larger properties like this (on Crescent). That ability to take these cases into court is really a key piece that we’ve been missing.”

There can be other roadblocks as well. Even when code violations are identified, city officials sometimes can’t identify the property owner to take them court.

“A lot of times the property owner will be almost hidden or it’s just not clear as to who the specific property owner might be because they’re covered by shell corporation after shell corporation,” the city director of development said. “So kind of digging through all of that and trying to identify who specific people are that can be held accountable is a challenge.”

In a perfect world, Surdyk would like to see the city be able to contact all property owners facing code violations to work out a plan to get the buildings secured. At that point, she’d like to work out with the owners what improvements are needed for rehabilitation before efforts ultimately turn to returning them to productive use. That goes for both residential properties and commercial.

“In a perfect world they would be all developed and we’d have new businesses,” Surdyk said.

However, the cost of rehabilitation, and sometimes even more for demolition, have resulted in numerous empty buildings from the city’s rich industrial past.

“These buildings didn’t become vacant and neglected and rundown overnight,” she said. “It took decades and decades of dis-investment. Sometimes it’s easier to focus on what you can control and there was a long hope that the industry would come back.”

She added: “I hate to say that Friday night’s fire kind of motivated me a little bit, but it did. It’s not something that we necessarily stopped thinking about, but it is something that when we’re in crisis mode didn’t focus on all the time.”