By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM — City/county building inspectors on Thursday approved permits that will allow the Healthy Start Academy to demolish two bungalows on Jackson Street.

The inspections staff, however, told the school’s contractor to check with state regulators before going ahead with demolition to see if it has to remove asbestos or underground storage tanks from the site.

Asbestos removal, if it proves necessary, would have to occur “prior to starting demolition,” City/County Inspections Department Assistant Director Roy Brockwell said in a memo to Landshapers Backhoe Service Inc.

In addition, the contractor will need permission from the city Transportation Department to block a sidewalk and street parking while the work is under way, Brockwell said.

Once the houses are down, the school will have to hire a certified inspector to check and see whether the site’s contaminated by asbestos or lead-based paint. If it is, further cleanup would be required, Brockwell said.

The warnings could slow the demolition process, but school officials and their representatives were happy to hear Thursday that the permits had been issued.

“It’s only taken 14, 15 months,” said Kim Griffin, the real-estate agent who helped the school obtain its property on West Chapel Hill and Jackson streets.

Griffin was alluding to the yearlong cooling-off period ordered last year by Durham’s Historic Preservation Commission, plus the weeks that have gone by after the City Council intervened at the request of the site’s neighbors.

But neither he nor Healthy Start Executive Director Liz Morey would say when the school will take down the houses.

“I don’t have a date yet,” Morey said when asked about that. She added that Griffin “would probably have a better idea” about the timetable.

He didn’t. “I don’t know that they’ll be demoed, either,” he said. “I don’t know that any decision has been made yet.”

Leaders of the adjoining Morehead Hill neighborhood had asked City Council members Tuesday to make certain the school deals properly with any hazardous materials on the site. The houses date from the 1920s, a time when the use of asbestos and lead-based paint in residential construction was common.

“If they are going to do this, they have to do it without poisoning our neighborhood,” Jeff Ensminger, an opponent of the planned demolition, said in a message to the council.

Residents also made it clear they will fight any attempt by the school to get the City Council to give up a public right-of-way that runs between the two houses.

Their board also signaled, in a message to city officials Tuesday, that neighbors fear the school intends to buy more land on the block adjoining its facility.

“Make no mistake … about our absolute intent to protect our residential zoning and national historic district boundaries,” alluding to Morehead Hill’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places. “If we do not, two more houses will be bought and [razed] and this historic cycle of abuse from this property will continue.”

Morey has said the school wants the houses down to make room for a new playground to replace one that fronts West Chapel Hill Street and the Durham Freeway.

Critics, including some council members, would prefer that the school sell the houses to someone who will rehabilitate them as historic residences. Morey, however, has said she’s not interested in giving up the land.

City/county planners say before building a playground on the site, the school would have to go to Durham’s Board of Adjustment to secure a special-use permit.