Someone Drove Into Our Commercial Building!

On Sunday night I went to bed around 10 o clock and right before midnight Mrs. C. woke me up to a message from one of our tenants that someone had crashed a car into our building.  We drove to the building to find the car already on a tow truck and the front unit of our 7 unit commercial building completely destroyed.  I had to run back to the house to get our keys and Mrs. C. learned some details from the cops.

The Damage:

The driver broke through several large windows at the front of the building and displaced a brick wall inward about 6 inches. The windows on the adjacent wall were broken as well.  The flooring was soaked with oil and will likely need to be replaced.

Rough estimates for the damage is in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. We should be getting quotes for the damages soon and are evaluating different rebuild options to make it more affordable. Some potential options would be to replace the now removed giant windows with a wood frame wall and siding instead of windows or brick and to replace the door with a standard exterior steel door instead of a custom aluminum and glass commercial door.

Criminal Activities:

The driver allegedly stole the car and was fleeing the cops when he turned into our building. I am not sure if he was trying to turn onto the side street and missed or if he intentionally drove into the building.  Either way, its no good for us. He had 3 other minors in the car with him. The driver of the vehicle is a minor. I heard that this also might not be the first vehicle he has stolen.

From looking at the tire tracks in the road the next day and the small clip from our security cameras it appears that he lost control of the vehicle about 300 feet away and “Tokyo Drifted” into the side of our building.

Insurance:

We have Liability only insurance on this property. Why? Because we could not get insured with normal insurance due to having Pushmatic breaker boxes, despite them being inspected and all functioning properly. We chose to go with liability only insurance so if someone sued us we would be OK.  The building is solid brick construction and someone would have to hit it with a tank to destroy it.  I guess I was wrong, a sedan can do quite a bit of damage!

The insurance of the car owner will not cover it because the car was stolen.

The insurance of the driver will not cover it because he his a minor and not insured.

At any rate we are not covered for destruction like this so the cost of fixing this is coming out of our pocket. We closed on a house we have been trying to sell forever the next day, so receiving a $60,000 check helped alleviate some initial cost concerns.

From talking to the prosecuting attorney we can file for restitution for the amount not covered by insurance. The likelihood of receiving anything remotely close to the actual damage is low given that the driver responsible is a minor and probably headed to incarceration for a while.

Initial Steps:

We cleaned up all the debris on the sidewalk and contacted Servpro to assist with securing the building. (This is at 1 AM!) Within an hour the Servpro guy arrived and we took down the broken framing and he secured the opening from people being able to walk in. This was really important from a liability standpoint, as there was tons of broken glass inside the unit. The car broke 3 panels of 4X8 windows and our new $3,500 commercial door.

The next day Servpro came back and made the board up job more stable. The picture above was just what they did to get us through the night. They did a great job for us! The total cost was around $1,600.

Inside clean up: I cleaned up all the glass inside the unit and sorted out all the metal and concrete.  This initial cleanup made the space safe to start getting quotes and for contractors to work on the repairs.

What About Our Tenants:

I’m very thankful that they hit a commercial space that was unoccupied at this time of night and not a residential space. No one was in this unit, so outside of the people in the vehicle there were no injuries and my understanding is that their injuries were minor.  Our tenants for this unit has some furniture that was destroyed.  Due to the expected length of time to repair this unit we ended the lease with the current tenants and refunded their rent for the remainder of the month.

We initially thought there was a possibility the city would condemn the building and render it “unsafe for occupancy” for the other tenants. We had to contact a structural engineer who stated the rest of the building was not at risk and that that unit would be fine temporarily as long as we added an additional 4X4 to provide support for the beam in case the displaced wall was not fully supporting the beam.  Being able to keep the rest of the building operating is huge. From an operational standpoint we are losing roughly 20% of our revenue instead of 100%.

Future Plans:

This is unlikely to happen again, however I do plan to take some actions to minimize the likelihood.  On the tree lawn out front there was/is a concrete planter that has to weigh 200 pounds.  That planter was pushed by the car and likely absorbed a lot of the energy making this damage less than what it would have been.  I plan to make or buy several of these and put them in the tree lawn as a perimeter defense.

I am going to speed up my electrical upgrade plans in order to get the building insurance sooner, or at least make it so the next owner can have normal insurance and that will increase the number of people willing to buy it in the future.  I need to upgrade all 7 of the electrical panels.  I would like to find a local electrician to pay who is willing to utilize the Eaton retrofit kit over replacing the boxes and concrete around them.