By Miles Layton

PLYMOUTH — The Plymouth Town Council voted unanimously Monday night to seek demolition bids for the former food pantry building at 811 Washington Street after a professional inspection revealed the structure is beyond saving — riddled with mold, asbestos, faulty wiring and wall studs rotted through at the base. 

The council meeting was around three hours long, very long – a lot of things happened – so more from that meeting will appear in next week’s Roanoke Beacon.  

The decision immediately complicated an active lease the town issued in January for the same building, and touched off a sharp public clash between Mayor Crystal Davis and several council members over what the town owes the organization that holds that lease and what the public deserves to know about how this situation unfolded.

“The citizens need to know the truth. I’m not going to overlook what’s going on here,” Davis said. “What I want the citizens to know — which they know, because you put it all on the news — is that we were going to discuss putting United Full Gospel in another building because we gave them a lease and we told them that the building was operable. It was not. We just established that. So council is saying that we should not put them in another building to open a food pantry. That is the truth.”

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“Everything Says Deficient”

Public Works Director Mike Wright presented inspection findings from Simpkins Home Inspection LLC, a Bath-based firm certified for both residential and commercial work, which conducted its review in March.

“If you look all the way down on the right side of your council packet, you’re pretty much going to see everything that says ‘DE,’ which is deficient,” Wright told the council. “Which means everything is pretty well shot in this building.”

When I went into that building last November, I knew it was bad, but not this bad.  

Mike said as much and more!

Wright didn’t hold back – the details were grim. The building — known to most residents as the old food pantry near the water tower — still uses screw-in fuses. Outlet covers in the back offices show burn marks. The rear electrical system does not function. Mold lines the walls facing the water plant and the back of the building. Ceilings are caving in.

During a site visit with a contractor the previous week, Wright said he scraped back mold from the wall and found structural damage underneath.

“I kicked away the mold and revealed two wall studs in there,” he said. “They were actually eaten up about six inches off the floor, so the whole side wall going down and around the back — a lot of the studs aren’t even touching the floor.”

Councilwoman Kim Williams said she was stunned, recalling prior assurances that the building needed only window replacements to be usable.

“I thought they said that this pantry was operable,” she said. “Only thing they needed to do was replace some windows, and they had the money to do it. So how were they operating out of this?”

Wright’s answer was blunt: “They were operating out of this like this.” He said the problems only surfaced once lease discussions began. “None of this actually came up until the lease parts came up and everybody wanted to lease. And then they brought me in and said, we want to bring you down here and show you what’s wrong.”

Councilman John Shelton pressed Wright for a bottom-line recommendation.

“Is it worth fixing or should we just bulldoze it?”

“Bulldoze it,” Wright replied without hesitation.

He said an electrician estimated rewiring alone — running conduit along exterior walls and installing a new panel — would cost roughly $18,000. “And that’s really band-aiding it,” he added.

Demolition carries an additional complication: siding installed in recent years was placed directly over asbestos on the exterior walls, meaning a licensed abatement contractor must be brought in before any wrecking crew touches the structure. 

A preliminary demolition quote came in at roughly $6,500, not counting asbestos removal.

Mayor Davis questioned what happened to a grant that had reportedly been given to the food pantry for window replacements — windows she noted were clearly never installed. Town Manager Joanna Floyd confirmed the grant never passed through the town. “That funding didn’t come through the town. That was actually through the food pantry — Food Line. It wasn’t funneled through the town.”

Floyd said going forward, staff would require any lessee and a town representative to walk properties together before signing a lease and to repeat that process annually. “So we’re not dealing with all these astronomical costs at the last minute, trying to renovate things and fix things up,” she said.

The council voted unanimously to authorize Wright to obtain quotes for both asbestos removal and demolition.

A Lease That Should Never Have Been Signed

Shelton immediately raised a legal problem: the council had just voted to demolish a building subject to an active lease — the one-year agreement approved in January for United Full Gospel Revival Center to operate a food pantry there. The organization had never taken possession.

Town Attorney Arnita Dula said the lease remains a live legal document regardless. “Even though they never occupied it, the lease is still in effect,” she said. “If it was signed by both parties, there’s a lease regardless of whether they took possession or not.” She said a formal termination would require a motion, and noted that because the item had not been added to Monday’s agenda, no vote could be taken.

Williams argued the town bears responsibility for the predicament. 

“I think we falsified by telling them that the building was movable, that they could move in,” she said. “It should have never been signed that they can even take that building. I don’t want them to come after us.”

Councilwoman Donsenia Teel, who was present via Zoom for the meeting but unable to vote because she was not there in person, agreed the town needed to be careful. “Isn’t it on the lease that the property was in a condition that they could lease it? Which it was not. So we might want to tread lightly on that as well.”

Shelton acknowledged the lease was flawed but disputed any broader financial obligation since the organization never moved in or spent money on improvements. His practical suggestion: cancel the lease and separately discuss finding another space for the food pantry. “I would dispute the obligation,” he said. “But I see what you’re saying — we need to make everybody whole.”

Both issues were deferred to a future meeting.

“The Citizens Need to Know the Truth”

The legal exchange gave way to something sharper. Davis — whose November 2025 motion to evict the original food pantry operator set these events in motion — said the public has a right to understand the full arc of what happened.

“We talked about in multiple meetings about the closing or the eviction of the last tenants in the food pantry, which we established tonight shouldn’t have been serving food in a moldy asbestos building,” Davis said. “What I want the citizens to know is that we gave United Full Gospel a lease and we told them that the building was operable. It was not. We just established that. So council is saying that we should not put them in another building to open a food pantry. That is the truth.”

When Shelton attempted to redirect the meeting back to Wright’s presentation, Davis pushed back hard.

“You’re not going to keep cutting me off,” she said. “The citizens need to know the truth. I’m not going to overlook what’s going on here.”

Councilman Micah Weathersbee noted that the town attorney had already ruled that a lease termination vote was off the table for the evening.

“It does matter because Attorney Dula just told us that it’s not on the agenda,” Weathersbee said.

Davis acknowledged the procedural point but held her ground. “We didn’t ask for a vote. We are in the middle of a discussion.”

Two More Properties on the Table

The council also received an inspection report on 118 Washington Street — the building adjacent to Bear Towne Market — which showed conditions nearly identical to the food pantry building. That property had previously been voted for surplus. The council settled on a $10,000 starting bid and agreed to bring a formal resolution next month, with a requirement that any buyer demolish the structure within a set timeline or forfeit the property back to the town.

A third property, at 108 West Water Street, drew considerable interest. Floyd presented a potential land swap: a downtown investor, BP Investments, has offered to trade a comparably appraised parcel next to the town’s mini park in exchange for the Water Street property. Floyd said acquiring that lot could allow the town to expand the park. The council voted unanimously to table the matter until next month so staff could research timeline requirements and conditions from a comparable swap the town completed previously on the corner of Washington and Water streets.

Last note: the fate of United Full Gospel Revival Center — and the food pantry it was approved to operate — remains the unresolved thread running through all of it. The council is expected to take up the lease termination and the question of alternative space at its next meeting.