By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Williston has taken ownership of the former Pesso’s Pawn Shop through a foreclosure and the city plans to surplus the property and sell it to someone who must submit a minimum bid and disclose what they plan to do with the property and in what timeframe.

            “We don’t want someone to come in and buy it and leave it like it is and now we’re stuck with the same problem as before,” said City Manager Terry Bovaird. “Obviously if we don’t get any bids on it, we’re going to have to raze the building. My understanding after talking to Jonathen Bishop (public works director) we haven’t done that in the past. We are capable of doing it. The question is what do we want to do.”

             The pawn shop has stood vacant for a number of years. The former owner is Michael Pesso.

            Bovaird said the situation is a “kind of a fluid thing.” He said if someone makes the city a great offer for the building and the new owner is planning to clean it up, the city would set guidelines for them to do something that would be best for the city.

            “The other option, if we don’t get that with an acceptable timeline we can work with, basically we would need to raze the building and then sell the property with nothing on it,” Bovaird said. “To be honest I would rather have someone else spend their money to save all the taxpayers money. We will reserve the right to reject and set a timeline.”

            The city tried to work with Pesso to rehabilitate the building and repair code violations but eventually filed paperwork to foreclose on the property for failure to pay code enforcement fines.

            Whether the city has looked at what’s left inside the rear wooden building, if anything, isn’t clear. The rear building doesn’t appear safe from outward appearances. The city is taking the position that the wooden building is too unsafe to enter.

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Enterprise Reporting September 2, 2023 Posted September 2, 2023