CHARLESTON, S.C. – If you’ve driven through downtown Charleston, you’ve probably noticed large, red signs, with white bars across them on many buildings, but do you know what they stand for? City officials say they’re called Unsafe, Vacant Building Placards, and their purpose is to help point out unsafe or vacant buildings to responding firefighters, but some property owners say they represent a blocked path forward for the future of the city.

“It will always be a problem anytime we have a vacant structure that is not properly maintained,” City of Charleston Chief Fire Marshal Mike Julazadeh said. “The placard system is intended to be a warning system for firefighters.”

At the moment there are three different types of Vacant, Unsafe Building Placards being used by the city to help warn firefighters before responding to a blaze. Each sign represents unique hazards responding crews may face in fighting the fire, like structural or interior hazards that help firefighters decide how best to proceed. Oftentimes this means firefighting is done strictly on a defensive or exterior basis.

“We had one in a building that was placarded a few weeks ago and the warning system worked and notified our crews when they arrived, they had the placard to warn them of the situation,” Julazadeh said.

Dr. James Wisner owns one of the unsafe, vacant, placarded buildings along Hwy 17 near his dental practice. For Wisner, the sign symbolizes one thing – frustration.

“This is not demolition by neglect, I’m trying to do everything I can, the right way,” Wisner said. “I’m not able to use the property because of safety issues and because of structural issues, but I’m also not able to renovate because the city will not allow me to remove the brick which is mandatory to bring this up to current code standards. Then there’s that sign on front. It’s frustrating.”

Once marked, erasing the X isn’t easy and is expensive. “Since purchasing the property and paying for renovation, trying to gut it once we got down to the actual bones and the foundation. We determined that the property was not safe,” Wisner said. “So I’ve had two separate structural engineers on two different occasions come in actually walk through and issue reports that say that this property is not safe and it cannot be brought up to current standards… all I’m doing is trying to create something that’s usable and safe for the people of West Ashley and you know right now there is no path forward.”

With nothing left to do with the property, Wisner has elected to protest. Using pink flamingos.

“The flamingos are just a reminder that you know, I’m here. I haven’t abandoned the property. I’m not neglecting the property. It’s basically just a way for me to let everybody know that you know, I’m here,” Wisner said.

The City of Charleston’s Office of Livability and Tourism argues most marked buildings, while vacant and unsafe, are still historic, and must be preserved according to a strict code set by the Board of Architectural Review.

“It’s all to protect the integrity of these homes,” Director of Livability and Tourism Dan Riccio said.

One such avenue, Riccio says, is a new board to help prevent future unsafe vacant building sign standstills in the future.

Riccio says they can’t comment directly on why Wisner’s property is at a standstill, saying he’s, “in compliance up to this point.”

“Essentially what they’re doing by not allowing property owners to do what they need to do to make these properties useful is destroying property value and destroying, you know, the property rights of these owners,” Wisner said.

“Every single person and every single property that surrounds this ‘unsafe, vacant structure’ has given me their support to do what needs to be done to improve the property, but the city doesn’t care. They just want to use me as an example of you know, how they’re going to handle things in this area.”