The Building That Haunts Esparto

On my jaunts to Cache Creek, I always wondered about this building. Now it appears everyone else is wondering about it too:

Downtown Esparto has gotten a lot quieter in the weeks since the state Department of Transportation closed the town's main street to through traffic and detoured thousands of casino-bound motorists around the Yolo County hamlet.

In mid-May, Caltrans shut down a five-block stretch of Highway 16 called Yolo Avenue over concerns that a crumbling 19th-century brick building might topple into the street.

The building's owners say they don't have the money to fix it, and officials said the situation could take months to sort out.

...The lack of cars was nice for anyone trying to cross the street, but terrible for the handful of businesses that rely on casino traffic to stay afloat.

"They're killing us," said Amrik Singh, proprietor of the Grab-N-Go convenience store, just beyond the roadblock.

Singh said he's lost a third of his business since the closure and isn't sure he'll be able to make his mortgage payments much longer.

"Everybody's hurting because of the economy, and now this," he said.

Other businesses, especially the few small restaurants in town, have been similarly hurt, owners said. A Mexican restaurant that opened last year and relies heavily on weekend casino traffic has been especially hard hit, officials said.

...The problem building at the corner of Yolo and Woodland avenues is known to locals as the Wyatt Building. Built in the late 1800s, it has housed hardware, grocery and dry goods stores, all long gone.

Pam Pearson, who now works at the town's fire department, remembered running across the hardware store's wooden floors as a child and then working there 10 years.

She said that even then the crumbly bricks would yield easily to screws when deer heads were mounted to the wall.

The building's current owner is a nonprofit group in San Diego County called Healing the Nations Foundation, which had intended to rehabilitate it someday. Then in May, part of the roof collapsed and Caltrans closed the road.

The foundation's president is "Pastor Bob" Maddux. He said the building has now become a "huge liability" replete with structural problems and environmental hazards, including asbestos and lead.

The foundation doesn't have the money to fix the building but is hesitant to knock it down, he said.

Maddux said he is trying to find a low-cost solution to shore up the building and is hoping to secure grant money to do the needed work, but nothing has come through.

"I feel absolutely horrible about this situation," Maddux said.

Yolo County Counsel Robyn Drivon sent Maddux a letter last month that described the building as "an intolerable public nuisance" and threatened legal action. The county could eventually step in and demolish the structure, she said in an interview.