Falling down

The crash came in the middle of the night.

Snapped awake by the sound of shattering glass sometime around 3 a.m., Chris Jaszczak's first sleep-fogged thought was that something had been hurled through a second-floor window in his building at 1515 Broadway in downtown Detroit.

He raced down a flight of stairs and hurried outside, hoping to catch sight of the culprit. With the exception of a neighbor summoned by the noise, the streets were empty. Then, as he inspected the damage, it occurred to him that there was a lot of glass on the ground.

That didn't make much sense. If something had been thrown through the window, the shards should have been on the floor inside, not outside on the sidewalk. So he climbed back up the stairs to the loft where he lives, above the café and performance space that has been a fixture in this neighborhood for decades.

Back inside, the picture of what really happened began to come into focus. Something had crashed partway through the ceiling, cracking several rafters and breaking one completely, sending it through one of the oversized windows that look out on the People Mover as it rolls past.

Up on the roof, he could see that a block of stone weighting 40 or 50 pounds had come hurtling down 12 stories from the top of the adjacent Wurlitzer Building.

That was in early April. But the landmark building has been falling apart for years, bringing Jaszczak more headaches than he can count as falling bricks continued to cause minor damage to his building's roof. Repeated complaints to the building's owner fell on deaf ears, says Jaszczak, a longtime friend of this paper.

Detroit attorney Paul D. Curtis, according to a 2004 Free Press article, purchased the 14-story building in 1995 for $211,021. Officially, Curtis no longer owns the Wurlitzer. Public records show the property has been owned by an entity known as 1509 Broadway, LLC since 2008.

Limited liability companies such as 1509 Broadway are not required to publicly disclose ownership interests. However, Kimberly James, director of the city's Building Safety Engineering & Environmental Department, tells News Hits that she spoke with Curtis about the building's problems in February of this year, and considers him the one responsible for making sure it complies with city codes.

"The building's owner got kind of belligerent about his responsibilities, saying that he couldn't afford to do the work required," James says of her conversation with Curtis.

But the Wurlitzer's history of problems began far before the LLC entered the picture. Information posted on the website Buildings of Detroit reveals that "city safety inspectors have been documenting unsafe conditions at the building since October 2000."

Opened in 1926, the Renaissance Revival-style building, as described by Dan Austin — co-author of the book Lost Detroit and editor of the website — featured a "gorgeous terra cotta face, granite piers and trim and an intricate facade accented with ornamental detail." Among its many features was a 400-seat auditorium for "concerts and recitals by student groups."

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