Clock ticking on Eddy Street buildings

The owners of two Gardnerville structures along Eddy Street that have been vacant for years were given a Feb. 12 deadline to fix them up or face potential fines.

The buildings that once housed Magoo’s and the former Eddy Street bookstore were described as derelict by the county in a Jan. 12 letter to owner Francis Burga of Peripheral Storage.

During a Jan. 5 inspection, the county found that the structures are not compliant with Douglas County code and gave the owner 30 days to remedy the issue.

Among the code violations noted in the inspection are that the structures pose an “incipient hazard or is detrimental to public health, safety or welfare” because they are unoccupied and unsecured, partially constructed, abandoned and are in a condition of deterioration. 

An attorney for the owner said that they didn’t see where the building was any of those things.

The company hired a maintenance company that worked on site Nov. 8-11. 

“It is unclear to us why Douglas County considers the structure in question to be ‘derelict,’” attorney Courtney Forster wrote.

Gardnerville Town Board members approved filing a code enforcement building that has been vacant for nearly 15 years.

The former home of Old Town Antiques hasn’t had a tenant since the property was sold in April 2007. Also on the property is the former Eddy Street Book Exchange, which moved to Minden more than a decade ago.

According to the Douglas County Recorder’s Office, new owner Peripheral Storage paid $650,000, more than twice the $268,923 paid four years earlier.

According to county records, the structure was built in 1905 after the fire of 1904 burned down that section of Gardnerville. The same fire burned down the Gardnerville Record, resulting in its merger with The Courier.

It might have housed the Gardnerville Post Office for a time when it was new. For nearly 20 years from 1980 to the late 1990s it was home to Magoo’s Pizzeria before it became the Bull’s Eye in 1999. By 2003, it was an antiques mall with a variety of occupants before it was sold in 2007.

The consequences of not fixing the buildings is a fine of $250 a day to a total of $25,000. As of Tuesday, the owner hadn’t responded to the county’s Jan. 5 letter.

The town is still working with the Nishikida brothers on the old Gardnerville Laundry, which was hit by a van in 2019.

The owners are working with the state to determine any contamination in the structure from its many decades as a laundry. The building was moved to its present site near the Gardnerville S-curve from near where Highway 395 and Tillman Lane are now. It was built as the East Fork School in 1876 and was closed in 1915 when a new two-story school was built near Cottonwood Slough south of Gardnerville.