The 60-day deadline for Yard Birds to come into compliance with Chehalis city code expired Monday with the shopping mall failing to meet any of the requirements relating to the building’s safety or eviction of its permanent RV park residents, according to the City of Chehalis.
The city has alleged the owners and operators of Yard Birds have violated building code and sprinkler requirements, created a public nuisance by allowing people to live on the property for more than 14 days, failed to gather permits for building alterations and created an unsafe environment by using its weaker second floor as a storage area.
From the date of an abatement issuance in December, Yard Birds had 60 days to correct its inadequate fire suppression system, provide the city with engineering reports on the second floor space to prove that its whole-sale use of self storage units there would be supported by the second floor, and fully evict RV tenants from the property.
Yard Birds operator Brent Eaton, who said he took over operation of the mall in January 2020 and is in agreement to eventually take over ownership from current owner Darris McDaniel, said the city’s claims are baseless.
Now that the 60-day deadline has expired, Chehalis Planning and Building Manager Tammy Baraconi said the city is being cautious with its next steps.
“Our attorney is talking to their attorney,” she said, adding later, “We want to let that play out. They’re trying to find a solution.”
The Chronicle obtained old permits Eaton claims prove Yard Birds was in compliance with the code violations the city is levying.
RV Park Violation
One permit The Chronicle obtained was a plumbing permit for the RV park dating back to 2007. Eaton claimed that because the RV park received a plumbing permit, it must have been a permitted business with the city beforehand.
When presented with the permit, Baraconi recognized it.
“That is a plumbing permit,” she told The Chronicle. “This is just a permit to upgrade the plumbing at the RV park. It’s not a permit for the RV Park. We can’t find a permit anywhere for the RV park. How it got built, we are not sure, but we’ve got a plumbing permit for it.”
Eaton said because the plumbing permit proves the RV park had been in operation by at least 2007, the park was “grandfathered in” because he said the city code prohibiting RVs from parking in an RV park for longer than 14 days was enacted in about 2011.
“Darris McDaniel dealt with this once before with the city in the past and they went through the records, and he was told by the permitting office that it was grandfather-claused,” Eaton said, though proof of that claim was not readily available.
Baraconi said that the 14-day-limit code actually predates the issuance of the plumbing permit.
“(The permit) doesn’t negate the fact that the RVs still are only supposed to be there two weeks,” she said. “The code is very clear that it’s two weeks. And we went back in our code and it’s been there since 1979.”
Brian Graham, who said he has recently recovered from a debilitating stroke and is on kidney dialysis, is a resident of the RV park.
Graham said, if evicted, he doesn’t know where he would be able to go and still have access to services that fill his medical needs.
He told The Chronicle he’s already paid another month’s rent at the facility.
Fire Sprinkler System Violation
Another permit obtained by The Chronicle was for the construction of an alternative school classroom for the Chehalis School District’s use on the second story of Yard Birds dated Sept. 23, 1999.
After having no luck finding records of the building’s current sprinkler system’s capacity — or with having a fire sprinkler company assess Yard Birds’ fire sprinkler system — Eaton pointed to the permit to prove that the sprinkler system was enough to protect the building from fire.
“There was a school here permitted in 2001, for Chehalis School (District),” Eaton said. “We have the complete alarm system as though this was a school. The permitting on the school was intense. They went over the fire system a lot. That was an alternative school right there, funded by the state with federal funding. So the fire system is pretty good.”
Nearly the entire second floor of the 305,000-square-foot shopping mall is dedicated to storage units that Yard Birds rents out. The units are primarily constructed with plywood.
Eaton said he didn’t need to have a permit to construct them as they weren’t load bearing, but Baraconi said it’s the walls’ construction that poses the most threat for fire.
“The requirements for a fire sprinkler for a school are very different than the requirements for a fire sprinkler for the small storage units that he has up there, and that’s what we keep telling him,” she said.
“He’s got storage units up there made out of OSB and plywood. They’re open on the top. Fire spreads very, very quickly and easily in situations like that, whereas (in) a school you don’t have all of those things.
Structural Integrity
The Chronicle also obtained a development permit for a series of five self-storage units dated Jan. 5, 2011.
Eaton claims that since the five storage units were permitted by the city, Yard Birds was in the right to construct the rest of the units, which fill the second story of the building.
“They permitted self-storage units up there in 2011,” Eaton said.
“Self-storage was signed off on to build units — not all the units that are up there right now, but it was permitted — which means that self storage was permitted in 2011 for load capacity and the fire system.”
Further, in an effort to comply with the city’s request for an engineering report for the load-bearing capacity of the building’s second floor, Eaton said he hired two different engineering firms to perform the work of the required report.
“We have been able to get engineers in there, but they would give us a rating — they haven’t been able to give us a solid rating on it, because of unknown factors. Both have said that we need to try to dig up the original engineering plans,” he said.
A letter sent to Yard Birds from one of the two engineering firms that Eaton allegedly hired — Exodus Engineering, Inc. — stated that the second floor’s load bearing capacity is 100 pounds per square feet live load “consistent for uses such as office, computer use, assembly areas, dining areas and restaurants, marquees, corridors, dance halls, ballrooms, and retail stores.”
Self-storage units were absent from the list.
Other Concerns
The city shared some other concerns it has with what it considers unsafe practices of Yard Birds.
Namely, its use of the building as a gathering place for large crowds.
“Downstairs, they have an event center,” Baraconi said. “It is zoned for an event center. They can have an event center there, but we … don’t find any permits where they converted it over to an event center. And we’ve had reports that they’ve had large events in there. And in order to control the flow of people … they are chaining a lot of the doors shut.”
She said the city has asked for access to the building to set a capacity limit and to ensure there are crash bars on the doors so that people can be restricted entrance, but not exit.
So far, Eaton and Yard Birds have not allowed the city this access, she said.
Eaton said one room in the building was granted a capacity of 365 people.
Ultimately, Baraconi said the city is “really just looking at the life-safety issues” the building poses to the public, adding that it also wants to remove the permanent residents from the RV park.
“Ideally, we would love to see (Eaton) correct everything,” Baraconi said. “We would love for him to show us that the building is safe and that he can continue to operate his businesses out of there and that other people can operate their businesses out of there. It doesn’t do anybody any good to have Yard Birds shut down.”
Baraconi told The Chronicle that the city has dealt with Eaton in this matter because it is under the impression that he has an agreement to take over ownership of Yard Birds from McDaniel, who the city says has not returned a request for participation in the proceedings.
