Dover road remains closed following building collapse
DOVER, Del. – A busy street in downtown Dover remains closed off to traffic as a result of a building collapse that happened on Sunday.
Ron Poliquin, an attorney who works downtown said, “There’s been a lot of effort to keep Dover historic, so as part of that, you have old buildings and old buildings are going to have problems.”
The building collapse happened on South State Street between North Street and The Green just after 6 p.m. Sunday.
The city quickly closed that block of South State Street off in an effort to keep people safe. While the closure has been a small inconvenience for drivers, businesses in the area say it hasn’t affected them all that much.
Taylor Collins, the owner of Parke Green Galleries said, “It’s been affecting the traffic that goes up and down, but we’ve had an increase in pedestrian traffic so in a way, that’s kind of good.”
Unfortunately, not everyone has been so lucky. Randall Guinn was renting space in the building that collapsed.
Guinn said, “So I woke up to text messages, pictures, my family members and friends saying ‘Hey did you see your building, are you in your building?'”
Guinn uses the space in the building for his real estate company, Guinn Homes LLC. Now, he’ll have to conduct his business elsewhere.
Guinn said, “I have an extra room in my house so I’m just going to use that [as my] temporary office for right now and go from there.”
South State Street will have to stay closed while crews remove the front part of the building and replace it.
The city has not officially said how long repairs could take, but Guinn was told it could take a few months.
Guinn said, “About two to three months, three being the most, two being the earliest.”
Overall, everyone we spoke to hopes the city can repair this building and preserve the historic character of the area.
Collins said, “All the architecture is the real architecture, so that’s why we really hope they’ll be able to save the building, that they’ll be able to structurally save it.”
The sidewalk across from the collapsed building on South State Streets remains open to pedestrians.
