The city has since taken control of the demolition and will pay for it, then charge the owners of building’s condo units for the cost of doing so — an arrangement the building’s condo board supports, as they felt they couldn’t handle it on their own.
“ We did not have and could not raise the means to demolish it,” Anne Sa’adah, president of the condo association’s board of trustees, said at the Wednesday meeting.
“ The stress of an apparently insoluble public safety threat compounded the stress of losing our homes in our community,” Sa’adah said, adding that the building’s former residents are “grateful to be living in a municipality that can organize positive-sum solutions, solutions where everyone comes out ahead.”
Fearing a possible disaster if the building crumbles, the city is also not taking any chances. To keep people away, it has restricted access to the streets around it, and shuttered for at least several months a section of busy Mount Auburn Street. The state has also closed down a lane of traffic on Memorial Drive near the building.
The $20 million, approved unanimously by the city council Wednesday, is meant to be enough to cover the cost of hiring experts adept at the “non-traditional demolition” that is required.
It’s “a really significant cost,” said Kathy Watkins, the city’s deputy city manager, said at the Wednesday meeting. She said the project could end up being less expensive, but that the $20 million figure is enough to account for contingencies in the complex task ahead.
“There are a lot of unknowns associated with this work,” she said.
Among the problems posed by this building is that it is laden with asbestos, which can’t be taken out because it is too unsafe to enter. So any concrete removed will need to be considered hazardous, which Watkins said would increase the cost of doing so by “five to ten times.”
After the demolition is complete, the city will seek to use a provision of state law that allows it to recoup the cost by charging the building’s condo owners for it in their tax bills, and require them to pay the city back using the proceeds if the property is eventually sold.
It was not clear what the large riverfront plot of land would fetch on the open market once the building is removed, but Watkins said the city believes it would be well north of $20 million.
Watkins said the city is working to find contractors for the project and is “in the negotiating process.”
Once the city selects contractors, it estimates they will need six to eight weeks to plan the demolition, then more than 12 weeks to carry it out.
The city has approval from the state to bypass the normal bidding process, Watkins said, in order to move quickly.
“We made a very clear argument to the state that this is an emergency situation,” Watkins said at a Thursday night public meeting. “So we do not have to go through that, and so it’s a matter of weeks, not months, in terms of getting those folks on board.”
Meanwhile, neighbors have been bracing for the impact the strange circumstances will have on their lives for the coming months.
It has all been a lot to take in for Emily Caulfield, owner of a crafting space called Still Life Studios, which opened its doors only a few months ago, just five houses down from the doomed condo building.
“I’m feeling like I have really [expletive] business luck,” Caulfield, 35, said. “Like how did I choose this building right before? How did I choose this space right before that happened?”
Caulfield signed a lease for her Mount Auburn Street storefront in October, just a few weeks before the condo building’s residents evacuated.
“ I lost a lot of potential customers,” she said.
Her shop, which formally opened in March, offers vintage clothing for sale, and a space for crafting and arts workshops, with an emphasis on reusing and recycling materials.
Then came news of the road closures, which will mean almost no one will find out about her business by passing it on foot. While the sidewalk is still open, it comes to an abrupt halt a few doors down, where chain-link fencing and bright orange barricades block all access in both directions.
Outside her shop on Wednesday, the road was much quieter than usual. A jumbo-sized light-up sign, watched over by an officer on police detail, practically shoos visitors away: “MT AUBURN STREET CLOSED,” it reads. “FOLLOW DETOUR.”
Caulfield is trying to make the best of a bad situation, she said, and has been ramping up her use of social media to draw customers in despite the closure.
On Thursday, she invited people to come to the shop and, sitting around a long wooden table, help decorate handmade fliers promoting the business she could distribute around the city. On a wall, using a projector, they watched the city’s latest live-streamed meeting about the project.
“ I feel like I have a customer base here. And I hope that can still be true,” Caulfield said. “This is expensive for me, and I need to find a way to make it work.”
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.
