A contractor began the tuckpointing on Monday on the south wall of the Historic Calumet Inn.
The work required by the city of Pipestone will be completed well before winter, said Troy Stanga, project manager for Roning Companies out of Sioux Falls. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the work must conform with historic guidelines, he said.
The boom lift arrived on Monday, Aug. 27, when tuckpointing work began on the Historic Calumet Inn. The existing scaffolding was increased and will be kept in place throughout the work to provide a platform for the mason and also to prevent stones from accidentally falling to the ground during the work.
Tammy Grubbs, who has owned the businesses inside the building for a couple of months, is also now the owner of the building. She secured the money to have the contractor start the work, an agreed-upon 35 percent of the total $38,500 it will cost to fix the south wall.
All those details came together last week just as the city of Pipestone was about to close the hotel.
Doug Fortune, Pipestone building and zoning director, briefed the Pipestone City Council on his pending action during the council’s Aug. 20 meeting.
Fortune outlined the five notifications he had given the property owners, the first four to the previous owner, Texas resident Hermann Bauer. Those began on Aug. 22, 2017 and tell the story of the deterioration of the south wall and the west wall’s windows. By May 24, 2018 and with not even a response to the letters, Fortune notified Bauer that the hotel’s back entrance was a hazardous area due to the potential of falling stones and the city would close the access, effectively shutting down the hotel, given that it was the only handicapped-accessible entrance.
About to send Bauer a fifth and final notification, Fortune said he learned that the property had reverted to Vanda Smrkovski, the hotel’s previous owner who had been financing the property for Bauer. Fortune updated her in an email of June 11 about all the notifications and the work that was required. He said he was told a mason would be there.
“It’s been 71 days since I sent her [Smrkovski] that email and nothing’s been done,” he said. “It’s to the point where, as a building official, it’s well beyond the time of getting the repairs made. So my plan is tomorrow morning [Aug. 21] to notify the Calumet Hotel that on Aug. 27 I will close the building and consider it a hazardous location.”
Fortune said during a separate interview that it was the one-year anniversary of his attempts to get the wall fixed that triggered his action at this particular point in time.
“I could not let it go past a year,” he said. “As a building official, I stretched it out in my opinion farther than I had with other people in town and I just could not let it go past a year. Something had to be done. Then the mayor asked me to do a full presentation at the city council meeting.”
The council signaled support of Fortune’s actions and the letter was delivered on Aug. 21.
Grubbs was not at the Aug. 20 council meeting and said during a separate interview that she did not know the council would hear from Fortune about his intent to close the hotel.
Mayor Myron Koets invited Fortune to give his presentation in lieu of an agenda item that was listed as, “Representatives of the ‘Save the Cal’ group will be present to follow up on their request for assistance to repair the exterior wall of the Calumet.”
But Grubbs said she was already poised to act. She had met with the contractor on Aug. 8 and had received their signed contract Aug. 13. She had secured the down payment needed for the contractor to start, and had finally received the Quit Claim Deed the previous week that was needed from Bauer. She signed the contract with Roning Companies on Aug. 22 and on Aug. 23, Grubbs and Smrkovski signed the contract for deed, effectively transferring ownership of the building to Grubbs.
Grubbs had attended the council’s Aug. 6 meeting where the council indicated it would be amenable to flexing one of the rules of its historic loan/grant program that requires the owners to front all costs. They told her, however, that they couldn’t do anything until she owned the property. The same day that Grubbs officially became the owner of the property she submitted her application for the city program.
The city council has not met for a regular session since Grubbs dropped off the application.
Given the progress Grubbs had made, Fortune said last week that he spoke with Koets and City Administrator Jeff Jones and “the three of us agreed that Monday morning [Aug. 27] the contractor would be here mobilizing equipment and if he doesn’t start Monday afternoon, he’ll start Tuesday morning and we will allow the Calumet to stay open.”
Grubbs said that the city’s pending closure of the hotel had no impact on her own timeline to get the walls fixed.
“I’ve been working on this every single day,” she said. “We have not had, legally, the authorization to be working on it because it hasn’t been my building. Regardless, I knew what direction we were going and if I waited for all the legal work it wouldn’t get done. I’ve been way ahead of them [the city]. It was a constant thing, every day, all week.
“Even if the city wasn’t giving me notices and never came over here and said they were going to do anything, I would still get those stones fixed,” Grubbs added. “Because this building will not survive without getting them fixed. It has absolutely zero to do with the city.”
The south wall is the only fix that Fortune said he’s requiring, though he did talk about the east wall during the Aug. 20 council meeting and also included that in the Aug. 21 notice to Grubbs about the pending closure of the hotel. Grubbs said it was she who had pointed out to the city potential issues with the east wall. Fortune agreed that “there was never anything in the previous letters about the east wall,” and indicated the situation continues to evolve.
“The east wall, now, from my visual inspection, it appears to be getting worse,” Fortune said. “So when the contractor [Roning Companies] is here I made an agreement with him this morning [Aug. 22] that I will do an inspection with him on the east wall once he gets his boom truck here. The two of us are going to do it together.”
Meanwhile, the Save the Cal group that has been raising money to help pay for the tuckpointing will continue its fundraising, according to one of its founders, Susie Otto. To date, the group has raised about $6,000 to put toward the project.
“It’s not ended, and it can’t be, because it’s not fixed yet,” she said. “We will continue to do this until the walls are fixed and then I’d like to see a group get together for [all] Main Street buildings.”
Grubbs said the group has been “very pivotal” for reasons that transcend the money.
“They were kind of like that little boost you needed, number one; that other people cared,” she said.
