Message from the Mayor: Waterfront Update – Building 52 Demolition Permit approved
Posted on: November 16, 2016 - 11:03pm
Fellow Residents;
On Tuesday night, the Board of Trustees unanimously approved that our Building Department move ahead with issuing a permit to BP Arco to demolish Building 52, the remaining structure still standing on our waterfront. The Board also voted to issue what is a known as a “Negative Declaration”, indicating that we did not believe that the demolition would have a significant negative impact on the environment. Trustee Stugis was away on business but indicated in a statement read at the meeting that he would have voted for the resolutions.
The disposition of Building 52 has weighed on the community and this Board for well over a decade. When I was first elected as mayor, I worked with residents who crafted a vision for reuse of Building 52 that excited me and others. At that time, BP Arco was inclined to leave Building 52 in place, capping the pollution that lay beneath the structure, and we had hope that it could be turned into an anchor for the future waterfront. With time, BP shifted their position, determining they wanted to remove the building to better remediate the site, leaving it cleaned to the DEC’s and our requirements, and also reducing potential future liability on their part. They applied for a demolition permit earlier this year. We countered with requests for additional information and questions that BP Arco has subsequently addressed. We have also reviewed the potential impacts of the demolition and taken a hard look as required by SEQRA - the State Environmental Quality Review Act, a law that requires a review of the impact of a project on the environment. We believe that taking this building down will not have a significant adverse impact on the environment.
The Board based its decision to grant the demolition permit on several factors.
First, and foremost, we believe that the most important objective is to achieve a cleaner and safer site. While the DEC has not specified that the building must come down to remediate the site, sampling has found dangerous levels of PCBs directly under, adjacent and within the building. This is no surprise. While Building 52 is a reminder of our industrial past and activity on the waterfront, this building’s history is literally and figuratively steeped in PCBs. The Hastings Waterfront enjoys the dubious distinction of being the location where PCBs were actually invented. PCBs were industrialized and applied as an insulator to cable in this very building in the middle of the last century: PCBs washed into drain pipes and culverts, and were flushed directly into the river. Their presence is detected at levels in excess of safety standards adjacent to those drain pipes, in at least one former sump, under the building, adjacent to the building, and on every single surface within the building – the floor, bricks, columns and ceiling. In some cases, those levels are orders of magnitude – thousands of times higher than safety levels. To leave these poisons under and immediately adjacent to this building is to punt this problem down the road to a future generation, and possibly not even that far at that. Super Storm Sandy swamped Building 52. It’s hard to predict what the future will bring, but other storms are certainly likely. If this building is flooded or damaged in some other way, and would have to brought down in the future, the PCBs beneath the building at that point would have to be excavated. That would be tragic if it were to happen a decade or two after the rest of the site was remediated: the waterfront would have to be shut for yet another clean up. We believe it is better to remediate the entire site – including under this building – now, and eliminate this risk to future generations. BP could, of course, theoretically remove the dirt under the building by leaving the building in place on top of existing pilings and scraping it out around the timbers of the pilings. They have refused this proposal on grounds of safety to their personnel and, we imagine, significant expense. Both seem reasonable objections.
Secondly, leaving the structure in place puts a significant financial liability on the site for BP and any future owner of the property. For starters, the ongoing persistence of PCBs, if we should leave the building in place as a cap, is a significant environmental issue that would have to be disclosed in financing, and pose a real problem for eventual redevelopment. Who would want to build – or finance - anything adjacent to or near a contaminated structure sitting on contaminated soil?
Finally, the building itself, while generally structurally sound, would pose the significant – even likely - possibility of becoming a white elephant for the entire site. It would require tens of millions of dollars to remediate and renovate with no likely use ever justifying that expense. The waterfront site, overall, is already constrained by a height limitation on future building imposed by the legal agreement signed by the Village with Arco and the Riverkeeper. Further limitations are likely as the site is rezoned in the near future. (It is currently zoned for marine industrial use and is thus unlikely to attract development until rezoned.) What might work in New York City, where greater density levels can generate substantial revenues to offset old building renovation and rehabilitation, does not work here. This building is huge – it covers more than two acres – and would burden the site unduly. We have heard this from one “green” developer who regularly works with redevelopment of industrial buildings and it makes imminent sense.
There are other considerations. Traffic patterns are constrained by the structure – emergency apparatus have difficulty navigating a left turn already, and traffic as a whole is constrained by the building’s location. The best location, as well, for any transit-oriented development (industry lingo for development that takes advantage of the proximity of public transportation like trains) would be in the northern sector of the property, and this building sits squarely on two acres of that prime real estate. There are other concerns as well. But the core issues remain safety, future use of the property, and financial liability.
The proximity of the building to the train station platform means that the actual demolition will have to be done with care and close monitoring to ensure that public safety is maintained. This is a process overseen, in part, by the Department of Health and follows well-honed protocols. The building will be taken down in stages, with monitoring (memorialized in something called a “CAMP”, a Community Air Monitoring Plan) carried out throughout. Demolition work is expected to begin in the first quarter of next year.
Many of us dreamed of saving this structure and a bit of our history. But this is not to be. Were it not polluted with PCBs and sitting on top of contamination, we would likely be having a different discussion. These decisions are major milestones on the path to a remediated waterfront and our Village’s future, back on the Hudson we are named after.
Sincerely,
Peter Swiderski
Mayor