The Carrboro Board of Aldermen decided unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to move forward with a draft non-residential building ordinance. It would give the town more power over commercial buildings at risk for being a health hazard to the community.

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle says the draft ordinance is especially in reference to one building in town: the CVS-owned building on the corner of North Greensboro and West Weaver Streets.

Lavelle says the question she’s asked most by members of the public is about the future of the building.

“About once a week, ‘hey what’s going on with that building? Why is it abandoned? Why does it look so bad? What’s the plans?’”

CVS bought the building but did nothing with it after the board denied the request to rezone the property around it in 2013. Lavelle says the town has offered to clean the area up, but the company hasn’t responded.

“We’ve made some offers to CVS to tear everything down; we’ve made offers to use it for parking; we’ve made offers to maintain it while they decide what they’re going to do with the property. And it’s been met with really kind of, you know, crickets.”

READ MORE: That Building in Carrboro is Still Just Sitting There

She says in the building’s current state, it poses some health and safety concerns.

“You can see the ceilings are falling in. The ceilings are falling in, they might have varmints, you might have little critters kind of in there. You might have folks seeing it broken up and trying to jump over the fence to stay in there at night. You might be attracting rats.”

But with the draft ordinance, it will allow an administrator to enter a property if certain complaints have been made to the town. After that happens, the company will have a certain amount of time to repair any damages. If they’re irreparable, other plans may have to be made.

But Lavelle says there are certain protections landowners have under the proposal as well. And all she really wants is to clean up the property, and make use of the building somehow.

“It’s really our hope that this will start a conversation of some sort just to do something with the area.”

The “Town of Carrboro Non-Residential Building Ordinance” will be one of the items up for discussion at a public hearing set for October.

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