Rubble from December apartment fire bedevils neighbors: 'Everybody wants it gone'

For months, James Groethe has been operating his restaurant, Leaning Tower of Pizza, in the shadow of a colossal heap of garbage, sweeping cigarette butts off the sidewalk while staring down a stinking heap of rubble.

The mess, left behind after a December 2022 fire in an apartment building owned by an absentee landlord, reeks like a landfill on hot summer days and has exasperated neighbors.

"This has just been beyond frustrating for me and my staff and the whole neighborhood," Groethe said. "I have customers and just people walking through the neighborhood ask me every single day, 'When is the city going to do something about that?'"

Groethe's weekly calls to the city went without a clear answer to that question. Asked why it's taken so long for the city to clean up the rubble at 2312 Lyndale Av. S. in Minneapolis, city staffers declined to explain. But this week, a timeline for the cleanup began to emerge.

In a newsletter sent this week, Council Member Aisha Chughtai provided more details: "In situations like this, the property owner is responsible for removal of the rubble. Multiple notices from the City were issued to the property owner notifying them of their responsibilities, along with a deadline for action. This deadline has now passed, so the City is stepping in to find a contractor to clean up the site."

Tuesday morning, demolition contractor Greg Urban of Urban Companies walked the length of the fence that surrounds the property to scope out the scale of the job. The city of Minneapolis' deadline for bids was that afternoon, he said, and he was considering applying.

"These are kind of tricky deals for the city, because that's not the city's [property]," he said. "But everybody wants it gone."

City spokesperson Sarah McKenzie said the winning bid will be submitted to City Council for approval next month, and Chughtai said the site could be cleared by the end of October. "Our office will continue pushing for this to happen as urgently as possible," the council member wrote.

The property owner, C. David George, owns several apartment buildings in Minneapolis. Another one in the Loring Park neighborhood was also condemned, boarded up and repeatedly broken into before catching fire last fall. He could not be reached for comment.

George's properties are the focus of many complaints from neighbors, who fear more conflagrations just like the ones that have happened when homeless people seeking warmth in the winter create fires inside. In response, the city has continually boarded and re-boarded his condemned properties, assessing George for the cost.

George continues to hold six active rental licenses with the city, including for the Blaisdell Court apartment building in Whittier and the Lagoon Terrace complex in East Isles.

"It boggles the mind that they can't do something about one property owner," said Harry Greenberg, a Wedge resident of nearly 30 years, as he passed by the rubble. "It's just absurd." He said he'd seen people climbing in the pile, and fears an injury might be the only thing that accelerates the cleanup.

For Groethe, the cleanup can't come soon enough. In the eight months since the fire, the city has charged him more than $500 to clean up graffiti on the north side of his building, which he cannot access due to the rubble.