Roofers Visited Casual Male XL Day Before Roof Collapsed

Village inspection reports obtained by a freedom of information request reveal that roofers were called to inspect the roof of Casual Male XL the day before it collapsed on Jan. 19.

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Evergreen Park Patch requested the building inspection reports dating back to 2008 for the commercial properties at 2637-2641 W. 95th St., including Casual Male LX and the Sherwin-Williams paint store.

The building inspection reports are fairly mundane for most of the five-year period, citing housekeeping issues, malfunctioning emergency exit lights and improper encasement of fire extinguishers. In August of 2010, Sherwin-Williams was asked to keep its front doors unlocked during business hours.

At Sherwin-Williams, the violations were easily corrected and cleared before the the building inspector’s follow-up visit.

Last June, Casual Male XL was ordered to provide window and door trim with a a protective covering, and other areas of the façade where there wasn’t decay- resistant wood.

On Jan. 18, roofers were called to the Casual Male XL store at 2637 W. 95th St. to determine why the suspended ceiling inside the men’s clothing store started to bow in the middle. According to the report, “roofers left the scene without informing the sales person what they found.”

At approximately 1:25 p.m. Jan. 19, the Evergreen Park Fire Department was dispatched to Casual Male XL after it was reported that the roof collapsed.

An Evergreen Park fire incident report notes that the lone sales person inside the men’s clothing store was on the phone talking to the store manager when the roof started to make noise and collapse. She was able to safely escape, as well as employees and customers from the adjacent Sherwin-Williams store.

When firefighters arrived the top of the bow cracked from east to west, causing one wall to push in and another to push out.

Evergreen Park officials inspected the collapsed structure on Jan. 22. Two days later, it was determined after meeting with the building’s owners, Evergreen Partners, that building was uninhabitable. The engineer maintained that the building was structurally unsound; and that costs or attempts to repair the building to make it structurally safe again to be unreasonable.

The paint store next door was allowed to remain standing, although a sign on the window still indicates that the store is closed indefinitely.

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