Livonia council debates fate of vacant Noble building after structural assessment and cost estimates

The Livonia City Council spent more than an hour Thursday reviewing two contractor reports and public complaints about the long-closed Noble building on Plymouth Road, and voting on short-term steps to protect the structure.

Council members and residents pressed for action after the administration circulated a limited property condition assessment by NTH Consultants and an earlier, broader OHM report. The two studies diverge: the NTH report identified immediate structural and exterior maintenance needs and estimated about $787,670 in renovations (plus contingency and soft costs bringing a tab cited in council documents to roughly $1.13 million), while OHM’s 02/2023 estimate for building renovation and site upgrades was about $2.835 million. When engineering added HVAC, electrical and window work absent from NTH’s scope, administration said those items could add $1.7 million to $2.0 million, producing a comparable total in the multi‑million dollar range.

Why it matters: residents and preservation advocates said the building — closed since February 2019 because of mold — is an architecturally significant city asset and should be preserved and mothballed; other council members warned that incomplete estimates and missing scopes could mask much higher eventual costs and urged…