Board of Building Code of Appeals Upholds Notice of Unsafe Structure Issued to 204 Lewis Street
Historic structure is at the center of a December 2025 Virginia Supreme Court decision and an ongoing case between Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. and the City of FXBG.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
Fredericksburg’s Local Board of Building Code of Appeals on Monday voted to uphold the Notice of Unsafe Structure/Order to Vacate issued in February by Building Official John Schaffer to the owners of 204 Lewis Street in downtown.
Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc., appealed the order in March, and the board, which meets as needed, gathered on April 13 to hear both sides of the case.
The structure is at the center of a December 2025 decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which remanded back to the Circuit Court HFFI’s appeal of the city’s 2019 decision to permit demolition of 204 Lewis Street, which is a designated historic building.
The Circuit Court hearing, which will determine whether HFFI has standing to appeal the city’s decision to permit demolition of the structure, has not yet been scheduled. The local judge has recused himself.
Attorney Clark Leming, representing HFFI, said on Monday that the organization’s position is not that 204 Lewis Street should not have been vacated, but that “there are steps that should have been followed first.”
Schaffer’s notice was based on an inspection conducted Legacy Engineering, which produced a two-page report finding that the retaining wall supporting the structure is failing. The notice acknowledges that this inspection was “limited in some aspects.”
Leming noted the Legacy report did not go into any of the prior analyses of the structure, which include an inspection and report by Rock-River Engineering, which the City commissioned and which outlined a six-step process for repairing it, starting with repairing the retaining wall supporting it.
In 2019, the property owners—Brian and Loretta McDermott—repaired a portion of the retaining wall that supports 1107 Princess Anne Street (the building known as the Charles Dick house), but not the part of the wall that supports 204 Lewis Street, located on the same parcel.
Leming said the most recent Legacy report included “no indication that there was a benchmark used to prove progressive failure” of the structure and wall. HFFI’s appeal of Schaffer’s notice argues that “to the best of [our] knowledge,” there have been no inspections of the structure since the Certificate of Appropriateness for demolition was issued four years ago.
“What we’re asking is that the notice of unsafe structure be modified to state that if there is maintenance to be done, the homeowner should do it,” Leming said Monday. He pointed to the section of the Virginia Unified Statewide Building Code related to unsafe structures, which states that, “All conditions causing such structures to be classified as unsafe shall be remedied or as an alternative to correcting such conditions, the structure may be vacated and secured against public entry or razed and removed.”
William Gaspar, a structural engineer hired by HFFI to speak on Monday to the building’s condition, said he visited the site and that it is his “contention, based on my experience that there is no state of instability.”
“What should happen is that some appropriate engineering analysis should be completed,” he said.
Leming also said that David James, HFFI’s president, met with City Manager Tim Baroody in January, after the Virginia Supreme Court issued its decision, to “talk about repair work” that could be performed on 204 Lewis Street.
“So it was a surprise to us when the notice went out,” he said. He questioned the timing of the notice being issued shortly after the Virginia Supreme Court decision.
Schaffer said Monday that he “didn’t just decide after the Supreme Court [decision] to go and look at” the structure. He said the city’s historic resources planner contacted the homeowners to let them know of the decision, and that the homeowners told her the building was “getting worse.”
“She shared that with me and I went out” to visit the structure, Schaffer said. “I noticed it was considerably worse than four years earlier.”
Schaffer also said that his team “noted there was someone occupying [204 Lewis Street].”
“I could not ignore this was a potential life safety situation,” Schaffer said.
He said his goal in issuing the notice of unsafe structure, following Legacy’s inspection and report, was to “keep people from going in and out while the process goes through the Circuit Court.”
In response to a question from Leming about why he did not order the homeowners to perform maintenance on the structure, Schaffer said, “This all started with the owner wanting to demolish the building.”
He said his decision is to “let the process play out” in the Circuit Court, but acknowledged that he does have authority to order the demolition of the structure and that he “could potentially and probably would” do so were a significant weather event to cause further damage.
City Attorney Kelly Lackey said the city “is not advocating for demolition.”
“That would take a subsequent order, which could be appealed,” she said. “Our focus is safety. [Schaffer] is trying to maintain the status quo the best he can.”
She also said the relief requested by HFFI on Monday—that the board modify the notice of unsafe structure to require repair work by the homeowner—is not what the organization initially requested when it appealed the notice in March.
“This issue is much narrower than the discussion today would lead you to believe,” Lackey said. “We ask that you not be blinded by what’s come at you.”
The board’s decision to uphold the Notice of Unsafe Structure and Order to Vacate was unanimous.
HFFI can appeal this decision to the State Review Board.
In a statement, HFFI wrote that “Safety is paramount to [this organization] and this community, but this case is lacking proper documentation.”
“The technical tests recommended by HFFI’s structural geotechnical engineer—a subject matter expert in the field—affirmed many of the [Rock River] report’s recommendations. These same tests are also required for new construction and site development anywhere in the city,” the statement continued.
“The responsibility of maintaining any building is code requirement and every property owner’s responsibility. Owners who buy int he historic district benefit from the increased value of the older, unique properties within it, and are stewards of these irreplaceable resources.”
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