Photos of the exterior and interior of 912 Chalk Hill Court taken during a City of Lawrence inspection in July 2015.

The city will order a Lawrence property owner to make repairs to her deteriorating Sunset Hills neighborhood home or demolish it.

City commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to declare the single-family home at 912 Chalk Hill Court dangerous. Neighbors and city staff said the home had been abandoned for about 15 years.

City staff will order the owner, Karen Braley, to start repairs or demolish the home by Oct. 23. If Braley doesn’t comply, the issue will be brought back to the commission at its Nov. 10 meeting, at which commissioners would consider demolishing and removing the home, with all incurred costs assessed against the property.

“The hardest part about this job is to ever take somebody’s house down,” Mayor Mike Amyx said. “But in this particular case, I think we have someone who has abandoned the property, who has decided not to care for it anymore. And I think the city has done everything it can within its legal limits to get them to do that.”

The bi-level home is located in a residential neighborhood south of Ninth Street and east of Kasold Drive. According to its Douglas County property listing, the home’s appraised value is $148,300.

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According to a city memorandum from July, there was damage to the chimney, garage door and siding. City staff discovered evidence of water damage to the ceiling, and part of the ceiling in one bedroom had collapsed. There was mold damage, the memo states, and the floor was saturated with water.

“It’s a bi-level house in a nice neighborhood, and the owners seemed simply to have walked away from it,” said Brian Jimenez, the city’s code enforcement manager. “It really needs to be rehabilitated from someone who has the financial resources and the motivation to do so, but based on a state statute, you either repair or you don’t, and we can’t wait any longer.”

Jimenez said he tried to contact Braley several times over the past four months and sent written notices to a DeSoto home believed to be her primary residence.

He said that during the process, the city found Braley had an active warrant out of Lawrence Municipal Court for failure to appear.

Three residents of Sunset Hills testified during a public hearing Tuesday, saying neighbors had shared responsibility of mowing the lawn and cleaning the home’s exterior for more than a decade. All of the neighbors who testified said they wanted to see the home demolished.

A letter signed by a dozen neighbors and sent to the city calls the home a “nuisance,” as well as a safety hazard for young children in the area.

“I live directly across the street and have to look at it everyday,” said Tyler Kingsbury, of 913 Chalk Hill Court. “We have a great neighborhood, and this house has consumed us. It’s an eye sore.”

Capitol Federal Savings has started legal proceedings to foreclose on the home, Jimenez said. He said he would update the commission if the bank took action before the Oct. 23 deadline.

In other business, the commission:

• Unanimously approved the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department’s request for an additional $78,650 for an ongoing project to improve the Kansas River trail between Burcham Park and Constant Park. The money will come from the city’s sales tax reserve fund.