The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday approved an approximately $700,000 contract to demolish Irwin House, the disused former residence in the Weed Street park of the same name.
The contract with Stamford Wrecking Company will cover “the abatement and demolition of the Irwin House,” according to Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer in the Department of Public Works.
“It was determined that the Irwin House and garage would be demolished in May of this year,” he told the selectmen during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “An 8-24 review was conducted and approved by P&Z to demolish the structures. The work performed under this contract will abate and remove all the structures. The building’s footprint will be filled, re-graded and left as a blank slate for any sort of landscaping improvements that are determined there.”
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the $711,700 contract. A large portion of the funding was transferred, following a vote by the Board of Finance, from an under-budget Waveny project account.
The full extent of hazardous materials abatement required is unknown. A report from an environmental services firm hired by the town earlier this year identified a “subgrade asbestos pipe and elbows,” Zagarenski said, and the town is hoping that it doesn’t run into contaminated soils.
“But there’s an underground storage tank and two propane tanks and anything that leached off the building over the last hundred years,” he said.
The selectmen asked whether the clean fill allowance in the budget is expected to fill the entire foundation hole (yes), whether there’s other fill in town if needed (yes), whether the hole could sink (hopefully not) and when the razing will be done (first week of December, following a 10-day waiting period).
The town’s plans to demo Irwin House emerged publicly during the most recent budget process. The brick Irwin House was built between 1961 and 1963 after the original 1920’s shingle-style house—once owned by IBM founder Thomas Watson, Sr.—burned down in a fire.
wow $711,000 –was there a public meeting on this
Google “what does it cost to demolish an 8,000 sq ft building in NYC”
you get this Between $32,000 to $120,000 max
add $25 per sq ft for hazardous material asbestos and lead
that’s another $200,000 max = $350,000 max
Consider St Thomas Aquinas HS built in 1995 loaded with asbestos and lead an 88,000 sq ft brick building was demolished in 2021 for $2 million dollars by Wiese construction
I wonder what the other bids looked like if this was the lowest bid — we did do bids right
Don’t you think if we are going to spend $711,000 to knock it down it would be more sensible to spend 1.3 million to fix it up for the BOE or another tenant at say $15,000+ a month rent $180,000 a year return on investment over 12 %
What do we get for $7111,000 an empty lot
Stamford Wrecking Company is making out like a bandit on this one. Houses get built for $700,000.
It would be much less expensive if the Town allowed the fire department to burn the house down in a controlled way as a training exercise for New Canaan and other local fire departments.
Today a FOI request for all bids for the Irwin house project
sent to the Board of selectmen. I don’t just see how this could be that expensive — read my previous comment for details on cost