The Triangle Cultural Center has remained closed by city leaders for now over a year due to the COVID pandemic. But many citizens are worried about the current condition of the local landmark with many ongoing repair projects also on hold.
The Board of Mayor and Aldermen closed the local cultural center last March due to COVID. And the building that holds a dance studio, a historical museum, art studios and more has remained quiet and closed for the past 15 months.
However, a number of repair projects have also stopped at the local center. The city council questioned a repair job on the building’s exterior south wall last August, with one alderman calling the work “shabby.”
"To tell you the truth, that is some shabby work," Johnson said, during a meeting last August. "The whole building is going to fall down. I want to get it fixed as soon as possible."
In April of 2020, the city council awarded the first phase of the Triangle project to Allen Ramsay with Historical Renovations of Yazoo Inc. in the amount of $8,750. The project included the installation of shoring at all three floors in the interior to prevent floors from collapsing, removing the existing HVAC equipment next to the exterior wall, repairing the gutters on the roof to prevent further water intrusion and shoring up the exterior windows.
"What did we pay (Allen) Ramsey to do," asked Alderman Sir Johnathan Rucker during that August meeting. "It cost $8,000 to put up two-by-fours?"
Mayor Diane Delaware said the project was intended to stabilize walls.
"There are two walls, and we discovered that the brick wall is really not the wall holding the Triangle up," Delaware said. "According to the architect and engineer, the bricks falling down are not going to cause the building to fall down."
"In other words, the skeleton is there," Johnson added. "But the meat is falling off."
After that August meeting, the repair projects at the Triangle were revisited during another city council meeting in September of 2020. Two quotes were provided to the city board for the second phase of the exterior wall project. Historical Renovations of Yazoo Inc., which handled the first phase, offered a quote of $47,500. Garner Commercial provided a quote for about $53,000.
Rucker said he was concerned over what was already done to the south wall of the building. Proclaiming to be “a protector of the city’s dollars,” he added that he did not want to continue pouring money into “patch up” work.
During that September 2020 meeting, the city council approved accepting a Request for Proposals pertaining to the south wall of Triangle. However, the discussion of the projects at the Triangle has also never been revisited during a city council meeting since September of 2020. Nine months later, the remnants of the first phase of the project that some city leaders questioned are all that remain.
The Yazoo Herald was provided with photographs of the interior shoring efforts inside the Triangle. Some of the two-by-fours used in the shoring efforts are beginning to buckle under a damaged ceiling. Crumbling bricks that show an exposed exterior second wall are still shored up by two-by-fours, and the exterior wall has not been touched in several months. Water damage continues to also be a problem.
In other Triangle projects, a broken window inside the dance studio has remained covered by a garbage bag for over a year. The broken exterior window has left the dance studio exposed to the elements during that time. Also, a tenant who was inside the Triangle one night, reported an intruder inside the building, who she believed entered through the broken window.
