CROWN POINT | The roof of a building housing the future home of a Special Olympics training center collapsed early Thursday under the weight of mounds of snow.
The building was vacant when the roof collapsed about 5 a.m., and nobody was injured, officials said.
The future training center occupies part of a 56,000-square-foot building at the corner of U.S. 231 and 113th Avenue, the site of the former Wolohan Lumber business.
The roof collapse was confined mostly to the Special Olympics training center, though some spaces housing other agencies and businesses also were affected.
Parts of the building were closed to business until overall structural integrity could be determined, said Margot Sabato, executive director of South Lake County Community Services, which occupies a portion of the building.
Sabato also is treasurer of a condominium association that manages the building, she said.
The Crown Point branch of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles next door to the Special Olympics training center site had not opened as of midday Thursday.
The office of Center Township Trustee Eldon Strong remained open.
The Special Olympics site was being used to store donated gym equipment until the training center can be built out, Sabato said.
She said snow appeared to pile up at a corner of the roof that connects the Special Olympics space to the South Lake Resource Center at the southwest end of the building.
The resource center houses the Center township trustee's office, a WIC program, a driving school, and a church meeting room and security-system business, along with the South Lake County Community Services offices.
The collapse took out part of the Community Services conference room, Sabato said.
Overall damage has yet to be determined.
Clients of the community services agency were being advised and their appointments were being rescheduled, Sabato said. A half dozen buses operated by the agency were taken out of commission until radio dispatch service disrupted by the collapse could be restored, Sabato said.
