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Epilogues: 'What's in store for this old house?' by Diana Nelson Jones, photos by Pam Panchak, ran April 21 Sunday, December 20, 1998 Diana Nelson Jones, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It's been a year since trustees took over the fate of a former grocery store at 146 45th St. in Lawrenceville, and its sale remains elusive. In April, the Post-Gazette profiled the 114-year-old corner building as a representative of the many anonymous Victorians that have, in the past two decades, lost their neighborhood roles. Some, like this one, have also become scofflaw properties that wear away at the city's time and patience.
The three-story, red-brick was vacant in 1987, when Ken Marinack of Lawrenceville bought it for $9,000. He says he had intended to restore it and make the first floor an office for his insulation business. But it was just one of several properties he bought in the neighborhood and could not maintain. Saddled with debts, he declared bankruptcy last year, but his creditors rejected his reorganization plan, and his estate was liquidated.
Since spring, a few phone calls to the realty company, Remax, and to Steve Shreve, attorney for the trustees, have produced no serious offers.
The asking price had been $15,000. The most persistent interest, from a neighbor, has been for less than the cost of demolition. Shreve says he cannot sell the property for less than the liens against it and that, though he has not done a lien search, he knows that any offer under $5,000 would be too low.
Closings on the estate's other properties are imminent, he says. After the paperwork has been completed on them, if 146 45th St. is still on the market, it will revert back to Marinack, with all the claims against it.
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