Selectmen OK Demolition of Town-Owned 1900-Built House on Grove Street

The Board of Selectmen last week approved an approximately $54,000 contract to demolish a town-owned house on Grove Street.

The town two years ago purchased the 1900-built house at 28 Grove St. for about $1 million, calling the .15-acre parcel a “strategic” property in that it backs up to the Lumberyard Lot. 

At their regular meeting on March 25, the selectmen voted 3-0 to approve $54,198 in contracts to raze the house and a shed and remove contaminants from the site.
“The demolition would include the foundation of the building,” Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer with the Department of Public Works, said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “And then we would just level it off to make it safe. And we wouldn’t do anything else at this particular moment until there’s a further plan.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson called the long-vacant house “an attractive nuisance” as it is. 

“It’s falling apart and we just need to get it down,” she said.

Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted in favor of the contracts with Complete Dismantling Services CDS and Complete Asbestos Abatement LLC. 

The selectmen asked whether people could cut through the property once the house is removed (not really), how wide is the parcel (80-something feet) what will be left when the demo is finished (just the front wall) and what would be used to fill in the foundation area so it’s safe (stone).

It’s unclear just how the town will use the property. 

Carlson noted that the town will “figure out what to do with it.”

“Could be parking, could be access, could be whatever,” she said. (The parcel was purchased under a prior administration.)

Karl noted that the town had talked about “knocking it down from the beginning.”

Murphy Carroll said that town officials “talked about a lot of things.”

Karl noted that neighbors include Arts For Healing, Stamford Hospital and Hobbs Inc. across the street and Black Creek Designs in back. He asked about notifications to those parties.

Zagarenski said that would happen through the demo permitting process. So long as no one petitions for a 90-day delay on the demolition—for example, for reasons of historical significance—the project should be completed in the spring, Zagarenski said.