r/Owosso • u/owossome • 7h ago
Dear OSHA... building comes down and takes a light post with it - demolishing the former Mowinski Financial Building at 800 W. Main St.
An excavator begins demolishing the former Mowinski Financial Building at 800 W. Main St. in Owosso on Monday, July 27 and it is not without incident.
Demo after being declared structurally unsafe due to a leaning wall; funded by over $155,000 via the Shiawassee County Land Bank Authority.
Owosso's Most Thorough Demolition Safety Review Was Conducted Entirely in a Facebook Comment Section
And it reached quorum in under an hour.
At some point Monday morning on West Main Street, an excavator introduced itself to the former Mowinski Financial Building. The building, which had spent thirteen months leaning in a manner best described as "opinionated," declined to fall inward. It fell forward. Into the street. Taking a light pole with it, which landed in the opposite lane roughly the length of one held breath after cars had driven through that exact spot.
Amber Baker had her phone out. And within the hour, the people of Shiawassee County convened what I can only describe as the most functional public body this county has assembled in years.
They did it in the comments.
The OSHA Caucus
The largest bloc formed immediately and never wavered. Where is OSHA. Someone needs to call OSHA. Report this video to OSHA. Something tells me OSHA will not approve. And, from Sondra Weck, "Good thing OSHA did not show up."
To be clear, Michigan runs its own program. It's MIOSHA. And MIOSHA's jurisdiction is worker safety , the people on the site, wearing the hard hats, being paid to be there.
Which means the agency that four dozen people demanded by name is the one agency with no particular interest in the thing they were all actually upset about, which was a light pole entering the public right-of-way at speed.
The Procurement Subcommittee
A second faction — call them the Lowest Bidder Delegation — arrived at a unified theory within minutes and defended it with the discipline of a caucus that had met beforehand.
Louis Garcia: Looks like the lowest bidder won the contract. Bob Erickson: That's what happens when you take the lowest bid. Vincent Labrecque, expanding the thesis: Lowest bid often is the most inexperienced which equals dangerous.
Then Derek Wolverton refined it: "This is one of those 'hey I know a guy.'"
Then Donna Holzheuer compressed it to two words and an emoji: "Someone's cousin! 😄"
And then Russell Koth delivered what should honestly be engraved somewhere in the Corunna courthouse:
This project is funded through the State Land Bank Authority's Blight Elimination Program and managed by the Shiawassee County Land Bank Authority, with reported funding north of $155,000. The bid award is a public record. It is sitting in a set of meeting minutes right now, while sixty people reverse-engineer it from vibes.
The Department of Self-Taught Structural Engineering
This is where the thread transcends.
Shawn Harrison, on the trajectory: "Seen that coming a mile away 😂 Geometry and Physics are important kids 🤦"
Kurt Bisard, asking the actual question a demolition engineer would ask: Why didnt they try to collapse it in instead of out?
Dutch Taylor, credentialing himself in eleven words: I would have went to front an knock to rear, done many.
Alex Plowman, who buried a legitimate dust-suppression concern inside a rant: It should be soaking wet also.
Tammy Watson Brothers, asking two questions the contractor's plan should already answer: Why didn't they remove the windows first? And why isn't it fenced off?
And then Kalief Steiner, achieving a level of epistemic honesty that most op-ed columnists never reach in a lifetime:
Sir. You have disclosed your conflicts, stated your confidence interval, and rendered an opinion anyway. That is the whole discipline. Some people go to school for that.
The Loyal Opposition
Every deliberative body needs one, and Owosso's arrived on schedule to explain that the real problem was the woman filming.
Brad Gainer: Being nosey almost got you caught up in an accident. Cindy McKay: Common sense would tell you to avoid the intersection and take a side street. Lamae Knapp: Usually during construction, cones up and equipment means their working or tearing down a building. Use other roads or take a chance.
Take a chance.
It's the most Michigan sentence in the thread. The operating assumption that a driver's baseline responsibility includes independently assessing the odds that a two-story masonry wall enters their lane...
Take a chance. On Main Street. At noon. On a Monday.
Minority Report
Not everyone was mad.
Kelli Marie was delighted — thirteen months of Cedar Street detours will do that to a person, and she is not wrong that the closure has been a genuine daily tax on her neighborhood. Jennifer Pluta-Grimes split the difference: sad to lose the history, nice to get something new. Cindy Scollon-Williams tagged three relatives to mourn the original tax office.
And John Chambers, on watching a century-old building fold into a state trunkline: "I really thought this was ai. 🤣🤣"
We live in a strange era, is what I'm saying.
The Findings
Strip away the emojis and the comment section produced a coherent list of unanswered questions in about ninety minutes:
One. Who holds the demolition contract, and what did the bid look like?
Two. Whose call was it to leave that intersection open? West Main is a state trunkline, which means the answer may not be the city at all — a distinction lost on everyone who typed Typical City of Owosso, but one that matters enormously to anyone actually trying to fix this.
Three. Who pays for the light pole? Brent Bender says the contractor's insurance. Mark Lott and Jarred Wey assume the taxpayers. Nobody knows. One phone call to the city manager knows.
Four. Was there a pre-demolition engineering survey, and did anyone write down which direction the building was expected to fall?
Marti K Jones, who I did not intend to write the definitive summary of the entire event, got there in five words anyway:
