The Mountain businesses question code enforcement

Business owners on The Mountain are considering legal action against the city for what they believe to be unfair enforcement of building codes.

Steven Cash, general manager of Old Mill Marketplace, spoke to the Canton City Council Nov. 17 detailing the problem some shop owners are facing since a fire Oct. 17 destroyed about 60 of The Mountains structures.

Cash said city inspectors are citing buildings not damaged in the fire and “asking for upgrades and things that would be required if they were doing new construction or updating electrical” wiring.

 “The fire didn’t touch any of these buildings and yet code enforcement is going around pointing out things in these buildings inside and out,” he said.

The Mountain, a complex of structures with an Old West theme, started in 1994 and was annexed into the city limits of Canton in 1998.

It was “annexed as-is,” Cash said, and now it “feels like we are having undue hardship placed on us by building code enforcement.”

Many of the buildings were not constructed to code because The Mountain wasn’t in the city limits, Cash said.

He said there were places on First Monday grounds that have code violations yet they “are not having corrections pointed out and being threatened to pull their meters.”

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