Mortgage snarls Lockport property
Dilapidated home faces Housing Court action
LOCKPORT — A local property owner, who city officials said in April was being given time to fix up houses because of a good track record, was summoned Tuesday to Housing Court for failure to fix up a house on South Street.
Steve Walsh of the Town of Lockport told Judge Thomas M. DiMillo that his normal method of placing run-down properties faced with foreclosure in a land trust while negotiating a reduction in the mortgage wasn’t working in the case of 407 South St.
Walsh said the mortgage holder, Midfirst Bank of Oklahoma City, apparently is determined to foreclose. “They won’t talk to me,” he said, acknowledging no repairs had been made.
“My company cannot repair a building we can’t sell,” Walsh told DiMillo.
Building Inspector Clayton Dimmick recommended demolishing the house.
“The back porch roof collapsed; there are holes in the roof, drywall falling off the ceilings, major water damage on all the floors,” Chief Building Inspector James P. McCann said last week. “I was in there. You don’t want to be in there.”
Walsh’s land trust was served with two violation notices, each carrying maximum penalties of 30 days in jail or a fine of $1,000 per day.
A land trust set up by Walsh, a retired optician, took title to the South Street house in April 2007. Legally, the property remains in the name of city employee Dennis J. Costello and his wife, Paula, against whom Midfirst had taken foreclosure action two months before the title deal with Walsh’s trust.
“You’ve had the property for a year. This didn’t just happen,” DiMillo told Walsh. “It’s 15 months after you bought it. . . . When you buy a piece of garbage and don’t accomplish anything in [15] months, can you just walk away?”
“Someone’s going to get the property back, and if it’s the bank, we’re going to go after the bank,” Deputy Corporation Counsel Matthew E. Brooks said. “If [Walsh] isn’t going to own it very shortly, it’s not going to get fixed or torn down no
matter what happens here [in court].”
Walsh said a judgment of foreclosure was signed May 15, but Brooks said he wants to see all the documents. No completion of the foreclosure is in the case file in the Niagara County clerk’s office nor in the online listing of court minutes.
DiMillo adjourned the case for two weeks.
Walsh has successfully fixed up and sold abandoned homes on Lindhurst Drive and Webb Street, which got him on the city’s good side.
Walsh took over a run-down house on Rochester Street, where a neighbor has complained of lack of action.
“There’s certain times in my career that I give people a little more rope,” McCann told The Buffalo News in April. “I believe he’s going to come through like he did on Webb Street.”
Last week, the city gave Walsh another six-month general remodeling permit for the Rochester Street house. It will expire Dec. 23.
“I’ve got a crew over there right now,” Walsh said Tuesday.
