NORTH BEND - It’s deadline day for a North Bend home owner to make his dangerous house safe. But, with only a few hours left before work must be completed, city officials said it never began.

On June 26, the North Bend City Council gave Yesi Guirado, the owner of 2505 Sheridan Ave., 120 days to repair or demolish the structure, which is perched on a sliding slope. However, neither Guirado, nor his engineer, has submitted applications for a single building permit or extension toward complying with the council’s demand.

City Engineer Matt Whitty said he expected to hear from Guirado or engineer Ralph Dunham of Stuntzner Engineering & Forestry LLC in Coos Bay before the deadline, but this has not occurred either. The only request from the top of the hill came in August when Guirado asked to perform access road construction work on the property in preparation for a geotechnical investigation of the slide, Whitty said.

“If they submit something tomorrow, that doesn’t comply with the council order,” Whitty said on Thursday, emphasizing the repairs or demolishment should be completed by the end of business today. He added he is unaware of any current effort to apply for an extension. “I haven’t received any information that indicates they are going to do that.”  

The house became a controversial issue in January when city staff informed the council about the slope, which has been sliding intermittently since January 2005. Staff feared the house could come sliding down, as well. Five months and five public hearings later, the city deemed the house unsafe.

According to the council order,  which was read during the City Council’s June 26 meeting, “if repair or demolition is not completed within one hundred and twenty (120) days, or within any extension of time, that the Council may order the building to be made safe by repair or demolition and have the cost of that work charged to the property as a special assessment.”

North Bend City Administrator Jan Willis said it’s up to the council to decide what to do once the deadline is passed. She said she did not know if the issue will appear on the council’s agenda for its regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 13.

“I do believe the council will take this issue up at some point in time, if we don’t hear from the applicant,” Willis said, adding she was unsure if Guirado will be penalized for noncompliance. “I believe this is going back to the City Council and I don’t know what they will do.”

Dunham said Guirado is planning on asking for an extension but did not say when. He added he believes doing so is necessary because the rainy season started early and until the slope dries, “the equipment required for ... repair would have a difficult time working on the site and the risk of causing some slope movement during construction goes up.”

He said there are two proposals that have been provided to Guirado to repair the hill, but not the house itself. Those options, which involve soil nails and soil screws, pin the soft upper soil in the slope to the base bedrock below by placing a layered geotextile — a light soil-retaining fabric and heavier metal fabric — on the slope and pulling the fabric tight, with the soft soil between, to the bedrock.  

“These nails or screws are also narrow grouted piers, which provide lateral resistance to the horizontal movement of the soil, based upon their spacing,” Dunham said, describing one option as a temporary fix that doesn’t negate the risk of hill sliding, and the other as extremely costly.

Regarding how he believes the city will react when Guirado doesn’t meet today’s deadline, Dunham demurred.

“I am not going to speculate on the city's actions,” Dunham said.

Meanwhile, Eugene Hill, the owner of Sapphires Mongolian Grill, which is located almost directly beneath the house, has completed a retaining wall to protect his business from further slippage from the top of the hill. He contends that the slipping soil and the potential danger of the house itself, had chased away a large portion of his clientele.

“I’m still running into people who are afraid to eat there because of the house on the hill. But that may change soon,” Hill said. “It’s what everyone is fixated on and it certainly isn’t going to help my business ... I really want that house to come down in a controlled fashion.

 “I’m ready for winter, my wall is in place. I’m protected now. I can take whatever they want to throw at me.”

He said he believes it is useless and too expensive to bother fixing the unoccupied house.

“It’s the equivalent of having $50,000 in body damage on an ’82 Ford Fiesta. Financially, it doesn’t make sense to the save the house,” Hill said.

He said the city will be doing the right thing if it demolishes the house.

“Once the house comes down, that’s a really good thing. Then we can begin to figure out how to fix everything,” he said. “I guess we’ll just see what happens on Friday. They’ll either tear down the house or not.”