The city of Huntington, WV will pay almost $30,000 for the demolition of an old, two-story building that partially collapsed earlier this month at the intersection of Hal Greer Boulevard and 8th Avenue.

Thus far, efforts to recover those expenses from the owner of the property have been fruitless, according to city officials.

The vacant building's collapse also has prompted Mayor Kim Wolfe's administration to conduct an internal investigation involving a personnel matter and review administrative policies, Administration and Finance Director Brandi Jacobs-Jones said Thursday. She declined to name the city employee being investigated or discuss any of the policies being reviewed.

The top of the facade of the vacant, red-brick building collapsed Aug. 10, hurling hundreds of bricks onto the sidewalk below. No one was injured, but the Hal Greer Boulevard underpass was closed for two days so demolition crews could tear down what was left of the structure.

According to county property records, the building was owned by Price Music Co., but the property taxes are paid by Michael Thomas, the city's technical housing inspector. Thomas' duties include inspecting dilapidated property and issuing citations for trashed and overgrown yards.

According to a memo that Jacobs-Jones received four days after the building collapsed, the city's legal department determined that Thomas holds no legal interest or ownership in the property. That means the city cannot hold Thomas responsible for reimbursing the city for demolition and debris removal costs, she said.

The city now is trying to locate the estate for Price Music Co., Jacobs-Jones said. The business was owned by Sheldon Price and his son, Marvin, she said. Both men are deceased, and neither has an estate in Cabell or Wayne counties, Jacobs-Jones said.

"This is not a dead issue by any means for us," Jacobs-Jones said. "Our initial concern when the building collapsed was ensuring public safety. Now we need to look at reimbursement procedures and the personnel matter related to this situation."

If the city has to foot the $30,000 bill for demolition of the building, it will consume a large chunk of the $200,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds that the city has appropriated this fiscal year for tearing down dilapidated structures.

It costs about $6,000 to tear down a single-family residence that does not have asbestos, Jacobs-Jones said. That means there are five dilapidated structures that may not be razed this year because of the collapsed building.

Plagued by declining population and economic challenges, Huntington has struggled for years with a rising number of abandoned and dilapidated structures, which can become havens for crime and fire hazards, as well as eyesores for neighborhoods.

There are more than 100 structures on Huntington's demolition list, and it's growing faster than the city can tear them down, Jacobs-Jones said. The city demolished 23 structures in 2008, but there were 28 structures added to the demolition list at the Unsafe Building Commission's August meeting.

Thomas, meanwhile, does not know if the city's internal investigation is focused on his involvement with the property. He said he has not spoken to the mayor's office about the issue since the evening that the building partly collapsed.

Thomas said he maintained the structure by boarding up the doors and windows and cutting the grass around it. He had paid taxes on the property for at least six years to keep it out of the hands of land speculators who bid on tax-delinquent property at the county's annual tax lien sale, he said.

Thomas said he had a vested interest in the property because he owns the former 8th Avenue Bar building next to it and would like to redevelop the corner lot someday. He closed the bar earlier this year.

"I don't view what I have done as a conflict of interest with my job, and I certainly don't care if anyone feels that what I did was unethical. I do my job and I do it admirably," he said. "I know I had ulterior motives in taking care of the property, but I went above and beyond what the average citizen would do. And it all came out of my own pocket."

Thomas said he did not use the building for storage and never had any indication that it was unsafe until the night it collapsed.

"Was it an eyesore? Yes. But I never had any knowledge that it was to the point of collapsing," he said. "Whether it was vibrations from a train, all of the rain we had received at the time or the fact that it was more than 80 years old, it was ready to go."