INDIANAPOLIS -- Thieves climbed up to the roof of a north side strip mall over the weekend and ripped copper pipes out of seven commercial air conditioners – doing an estimated $50,000-worth of damage for just a few hundred dollars in scrap metal.
Chris Sullivan is the co-owner of Braun & Sullivan, which owns a number of commercial properties around Indianapolis.
Sullivan says he received a call from one of his tenants at their location at 52nd Street and Allisonville Road on Sunday that the AC wasn't working.
When he went to examine the units on the roof, he found they'd been gutted and stripped of the valuable metal components inside.
Each unit costs around $7,000, Sullivan said. All seven of them will now have to be replaced.
For his trouble, Sullivan says the thieves probably made off with a few hundred dollars in scrap metal.
"[They'll get] like, probably $30-$40 per unit," Sullivan said. "So, for a couple hundred dollars they probably ended up costing us $50,000 to replace all these units."
Sullivan said this same thing has happened at this location before in 2012. He'll now have to hire a crane to remove the old units and pay for new ones to be installed.
Being without AC is an inconvenience for all of us tenants, but particularly so for Murphy's @ Flynn's restaurant, which takes up the north side of the building. With temperatures expected to reach nearly into the 80s this weekend, the prospect of being without AC is not an attractive one.
"It's very aggravating," Sullivan said. "We try to keep our buildings up, nice for the neighborhood, nice for the tenants. And then when something like this happens it really takes the wind out of your sales. It's really hard to deal with."
The building is surrounded by apartment complexes on two sides. Sullivan says he's hopeful someone may have seen or heard something Sunday that could lead police to the thieves.
If you have any information about this incident, you're encouraged to contact Crime Stoppers at 317-262-TIPS.
