On Wednesday, Oak Bluffs building inspector Mark Barbadoro stepped back from an ultimatum he had issued one day earlier before a meeting of the Oak Bluffs selectmen and directed at the owners of the Island Theater. The change in tone was directly related to the appearance of a crew of roofers on the top of the decrepit and long-vacant theater at the foot of Circuit Avenue.
Tuesday, when he spoke to selectmen, it was clear that Mr. Barbadoro had had enough. Citing the lack of progress of the repairs to the Island Theater, and the steady stream of complaints received from townspeople, Mr. Barbadoro told the board of selectmen at their regular meeting that he’d put Benjamin Hall Jr. and Brian Hall, co-owners, on notice.
“Brian [Hall] assures me next Thursday his roofing contractor will be back on the job,” Mr. Barbadoro said. “If I don’t see a contractor there, I will move forward and declare it an unsafe structure.”
Mr. Barbadoro said he’d been told by Brian Hall that the cause of the current delay is that the contractor has had a serious back injury and that he’d had people quit.
Mr. Barbadoro was clearly not assuaged: “I’ve been trying to work with [the Halls] because that’s the easiest and best solution. But it’s not working.”
However, in another twist in the Island Theater saga, a roofing crew was at work on the theater on Wednesday morning. Mr. Hall told The Times that he was not aware of Mr. Barbadoro’s appearance at the selectmen’s meeting the night before. He said there had been a misunderstanding and that he had promised work to begin on Wednesday of this week, not next week. Mr. Hall said he expects the roofing contractor, Ken Noiseux of West Tisbury, to be done in seven to 10 business days, weather permitting. He added that Mr. Barbadoro made it clear in a recent conversation that the weather had to be very severe to justify any work stoppage. “This whole thing has been a wild ride,” Mr. Hall said.
Mr. Barbadoro was unaware of the activity until contacted by The Times. “If he gets it done in seven to 10 days and gets to repairing the walls expeditious manner, then I’m not going to bring in an engineer,” Mr. Barbadoro said on Wednesday morning. “But if he doesn’t move on to the walls soon, I have to hire someone to determine if the building is safe. If it’s unsafe, then I’ll move forward, but I don’t want to do that. It’s a waste of everybody’s time and money. We are much better off having him finish it on his own than fight him in court, but I’ll do it if I have to.”
‘Wild ride’
Mr. Barbadoro has been pushing Mr. Hall for action on the theater since he was hired by the town in September 2014. After a series of missed deadlines, he declared the building unsafe on June 3 last year. He stated in his June 3 certified letter to Mr. Hall that he would not tolerate the delays that have plagued the renovation since the beleaguered building went dark in 2012. He then allowed work to resume on June 4, and allotted 30 days to repair the roof and the walls, granting an extension on the June 1 downtown construction moratorium, which lasts until Sept. 15. “There’s no reason the work can’t be done in that time,” he told The Times on June 4.
But on June 12, he issued a stop-work order because safety guards to protect pedestrians from falling objects had not been installed. Since some progress had been made before the stop-work order, Mr. Barbadoro told The Times in an email that he was optimistic the work could be done by Oct. 1, if work began in earnest on Sept. 15.
With no visible progress, Mr. Barbadoro appeared before the selectmen on Tuesday night. Mr. Barbadoro told selectmen Tuesday that irrespective of the engineer’s findings, the town should prepare for legal proceedings.
Mr. Barbadoro told selectmen that the town would bear the cost of an evaluation by a structural engineer and if necessary, the demolition of the building. The prospect clearly gave the board pause.
“However, if the building is declared unsafe, the town can recoup legal fees, engineer fees, and all demolition costs,” he said.
“So many people have been complaining for so long, we have to take action,” selectman Walter Vail, a long-outspoken critic of the Hall’s handling of the theater, said.
State law allows selectmen a legal avenue to declare a building a nuisance and take steps to remove it at the owner’s expense.
“Not to pass the buck, but the selectmen can knock down buildings too,” Mr. Barbadoro said, adding that the criteria for the selectmen was more aesthetically based than structurally based, as is the case for him. Selectman Gail Barmakian asked for a meeting between the board and Mr. Barbadoro to discuss the town’s options.
Mr. Barbadoro said he was eager to work with selectmen so the problem could be resolved before the summer of 2016. But he also highlighted another potential outcome. “If the engineer declares the building safe, it’s over,” he said, referring to a loss of leverage.
