Feb 16, 2018 7 min read

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Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter

The building at 154 W. Pike St. in Canonsburg that was the site of an emergency evacuation in early January

Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter

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From left, Canonsburg Council President R.T. Bell stands with Jason Johnson of the City Mission as he receives a letter of appreciation Monday from Mayor Dave Rhome and code enforcement officer Troy Lucas for the mission's help in finding a new home for a Canonsburg couple whose apartment was condemned in early January.

Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter

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Kathleen and Marvin Cannon were just about to sit down to dinner when two borough officials showed up at their Canonsburg apartment last month to “look around.” The couple never expected they’d have to pack up their lives and move that day, one of the coldest days of the year.

“They said, ‘You can’t stay here. It’s not safe,'” Kathleen said. “They were scared the ceiling would fall on us.”

The Canonsburg officials, code enforcement officer Troy Lucas and fire inspector Jason Brown, condemned the apartment building that day, Jan. 4. They had responded to complaints from a second-story tenant who said that because of a hole in the ceiling, it was snowing inside his apartment, which is attached to the Snowy White Laundromat at 154 W. Pike St.

“We do believe there was a possibility of it collapsing because of the amount of water the building had been taking on,” Lucas said more than a month later.

Canonsburg Borough photo

Lucas and Brown used eight padlocks to close up the building, notified the landlord, James Gregorakis, and filed a report on their findings.

Canonsburg Borough photo

In the upstairs apartment, occupied by Sam Higgins, they found the floors were “moving and sagging” when walked on, the windows were separated from the walls, and towels were used to close the gaps and “keep the weather out.”

“The stairway leading from apartment two to the front of the structure had holes in the ceiling where you could see outside,” Lucas wrote in his report. “Snow was actively coming in the hole and piling up into apartment two.”

The report said Higgins used a bucket to collect water leaking from the ceiling, which had collapsed in the bedroom. The stairs and deck in the back of apartment two were so rotted, the report said, that “collapse is imminent.”

Canonsburg Borough photo

The officers then inspected the Cannons’ downstairs apartment and found their bathroom ceiling was sagging from water damage and there was cracking in the kitchen and living room ceilings. The Cannons said they’d lived there six years and had always dealt with a leaky roof, and even had to deal with rats entering the building at one point.

“I always prayed, ‘God, don’t let that ceiling fall on us,'” Kathleen said in an interview Wednesday.

At about 3:30 p.m. on the day of the inspection, the borough officials notified the Cannons and Higgins that all three of them needed to be out of the building that day. Higgins reportedly decided to stay with a family member, but the Cannons had nowhere to go and only one hour to pack up clothes for the next few days and gather all their medications. Both are on oxygen for respiratory complications.

“It was devastating,” Marvin said. “We were shocked.”

Kathleen said she couldn’t stop crying.

“You lose your home and everything in your home and you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

Canonsburg Mayor Dave Rhome contacted Washington City Mission to see if they could house the Cannons. Jason Johnson, with the City Mission, said they typically separate the women and men who stay there, but they didn’t want to separate the Cannons after everything they’d just gone through. Instead, the mission put them in the DoubleTree Hotel in Meadow Lands for five days, provided them with meals each day, and Johnson brought them to services at the mission’s chapel.

“We did a lot of praying,” Johnson said. “God’s just brought us all together.”

Kathleen said she cried all night at the hotel that first night.

“He’d look at me, and I looked at him, and he said, ‘My nerves are shot,'” she said. “My heart rate was going nuts – I had so much anxiety.”

Kathleen said she had to go to the hospital within the following week for shortness of breath. She left the hospital with anxiety medication.

While his tenants faced homelessness and a hospital stay, Gregorakis faced nine code violations and months of lost business at the laundromat. He said the borough “went overboard” when they closed his business.

“They think that Canonsburg is Beverly Hills with all the building and fire codes,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “They closed my laundromat because it’s the same property, so I’ve lost three months of business now because of this.”

Gregorakis said he’s been in the laundry business nearly 60 years and also owns the Snowy White Laundromats on Maiden Street and Jefferson Avenue in Washington. He’s owned the one in Canonsburg since 1973, he said.

He said the borough, for which he sat on council for 10 years in the 1980s, is “picking” on him with the violations. He said he knew the roof was leaking, but didn’t know about many of the other issues with the building.

“I don’t know why they’re picking on me,” he said. “There’s a lot of properties in Canonsburg that are a lot worse than mine, and they don’t do anything about those – ones that are empty that should be torn down. At least mine was occupied.”

One of his biggest concerns, he said, is the way the borough is making him take the walls and plaster down to further inspect for damage.

“There’s nothing wrong with those walls,” he said. “It’s going to cost me close to $50,000 to fix this up, the way they’re making me tear it apart first and build it back.”

Gregorakis hired a third-party structural engineer, Churches Engineering LLC, to inspect his property Jan. 5.

“He said the building was safe,” Gregorakis said. “There’s nothing wrong with that building.”

Canonsburg Borough photo

But Churches Engineering filed its report with the borough, and in that report it states that neither the apartments nor the laundromat are safe for occupancy. It also suggested all the plaster and drywall be taken down.

“I suggest that all plaster and drywall be removed in the apartment areas to repair and or replace the existing wood framing,” the report said.

The code violations in the laundromat related to a broken rafter at a leak in the roof, according to Churches Engineering.

“The entire roof framing should be inspected to observe the conditions of all the rafters,” the report said. “I do not consider the laundry structure safe to occupy until repairs have been made.”

Gregorakis wanted to make the repairs to the laundromat first, so he could reopen it before starting work on the apartments. But in Lucas’ report, he wrote, “That’s not how this process is going to work.” Lucas said Harold Ivery, the borough’s building inspector, told Gregorakis the entire building must be brought up to code before it would be released to him.

The borough issued building and zoning permits to Gregorakis Jan. 25, and work started on the building Feb. 12, according to Lucas’ report.

Until it’s up to code, which he hopes to achieve within three to four weeks, Gregorakis is not allowed in the building. Lucas said because the building was condemned and possessed by the borough, no one is allowed in it except the contractors, and even they are only allowed there between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

“There’s seven or eight guys in there working, and I’m the owner, but I’m not allowed in it,” Gregorakis said. “I’m paying for these repairs, so I should be able to go in and show them what to do and how I want it done.”

Gregorakis said he did feel sorry for his tenants, the Cannons, and called his cousin, a landlord in Houston, to get them into an apartment there. With help from Johnson and the City Mission, the Cannons did move into the Houston apartment, for which Community Action Southwest paid the security deposit.

Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter

“I think God gave me this,” Kathleen said about their new place. “The Lord wanted us out of there. There were people praying for us that I didn’t even know.”

Kathleen said Gregorakis came to their new apartment to pick up their keys to the condemned building. She said he apologized to them for what happened Jan. 4.

“Since God forgave my sins, I said, ‘That’s all right,'” Kathleen said.