Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 12, 1993 TAG: 9303120159
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DUMMY SPRINKLERS FOUND DOWNTOWN
"THERE'S A LOT going on out there every day without proper permits or inspections, but with a limited number of employees, we can't cruise and look for violations," says Ron Smith, Roanoke's chief building inspector.Workers remodeling a Campbell Court office recently discovered that sprinklers installed by a former tenant had been strung on electrical wire like Christmas lights and had no water pipes.
The discovery left a trail of souvenir sprinkler heads on desks of city and private inspectors and left all involved red-faced.
"Not only did he not [install the system properly], but he attempted to make it look like he did," said Stephen Mancuso, general manager of Valley Metro, which manages the city-owned building.
Valley Metro is a municipal company. Campbell Court, on Campbell Avenue Southwest in downtown, includes an office complex and the bus passenger center.
No one knew the sprinklers wouldn't work until the tenant was evicted and remodeling began. The tenant never got a permit to install a sprinkler system in the first place.
The permit would automatically have triggered an inspection, said Ron Smith, chief building inspector for the city.
City inspectors would have looked behind the ceiling tiles to confirm a water supply to the system. A private company that does quarterly inspections at Campbell only verified that the sprinkler heads were in the ceiling.
However, the shortcomings in that office did not affect the systems of other tenants at Campbell Court, officials said.
The former tenant, Harry B. Woods Jr., who owned B&W Electrical and Mechanical, also failed to get building permits for the other work he did on the office and which he valued at $28,500.
And he apparently falsified the certificate of occupancy that he submitted to Valley Metro's property manager, city officials said.
Mancuso said his company generally doesn't ask tenants for a copy of the certificate of occupancy, but did in Woods' case to push him to officially move in and start paying rent.
Tenants are given time to improve their offices before rent starts, but Mancuso said Woods took longer than most and appeared to be using the office while he still claimed it wasn't finished enough to be occupied.
Mancuso said his staff requested the certificate of occupancy to force Woods to either move in and start paying rent or finish the work.
City building inspectors found no records of building permits for Woods' space, but Mancuso said one of his staff remembers seeing a permit displayed at Woods' office.
Mancuso said the staff was careful to look for a permit on display after having once found another tenant who had begun work without permits.
Mancuso said he now wonders where the permit Woods had on display came from.
Woods was evicted and his office contents seized last fall when he defaulted on his lease, said Kathryn Pruitt, assistant general manager for Valley Metro.
Pruitt said the amount of back rent Woods left owing was small, but he had received almost $14,000 in rent credit for the work he did on his office.
She said her office didn't allow Woods the $28,000 credit he sought because he didn't supply sufficient documentation to substantiate it.
The newspaper was unable to contact Woods, whose phone number is unlisted.
B&W rented a second-floor office from Valley Metro in January 1990. For 18 months after Woods occupied the office, Magic City Sprinkler Co. in quarterly inspection reports for Valley Metro cited Woods' office for not having a legally required fire sprinkler system.
The non-functioning sprinkler heads were installed between July and October of 1991 because Magic City's reports did not mention the deficiency after June.