Going somewhere to die
A business friend of mine is knocking down desperately needed, occupied affordable housing in
Excavator operator Michael Crupi tears down building 40 of the Henry Hudson Town Houses on Thursday morning. Building 40 was the first of the 1970s-era townhouses to be torn down making way for construction of new apartments.
Nor could the residents, as described in the
Residents at the Village Green Apartments watch as demolition starts on the first vacated Henry Hudson Town Houses building on Thursday morning. One building was demolished Thursday and another will fall next week after the groundbreaking ceremonies on Tuesday.
Across from Building 44, and with a clear view of Building 40, neighbors Tonya Reynolds and Elizabeth Tremaine were watching the demolition with five of their children, excited to see the process actually beginning.
“I said I wouldn’t believe it until I saw demolition, and now I believe it,” Tremaine said.
Why are these buildings coming down? (Watch the video of the demolition.)
Upstate
GLENS FALLS — Neighbors and former residents sat in folding chairs to watch an excavator noisily splinter wood siding and shatter glass panes, destroying first one apartment, then the next in Building 40 at the Henry Hudson Town Houses complex on Thursday.
Some stood to take cell-phone pictures from a better vantage.
“Weird,” said Carol Terry, describing the experience as she watched the machine’s claw-like arm getting closer to her former home. “Shocking.”
Sitting on the stoop across from her old building with a crowd of friends, Terry had to repeat herself to be heard over the grinding din of the machine. When the wall of her apartment finally came down, Terry was crying just a bit.
“My grandkids used to play up there,” she said.
Why are the residents happy?
“The kids love the big claw machine,” said Reynolds. “They’re getting a big kick out of it.”
Because the Henry Hudson Townhouses that is coming down will be replaced by a new, better affordable housing complex on the same site, with the same residents moving in to completely renovated apartments.
Building 40 was the first to be destroyed in the scheduled demolition and replacement of the 136 apartments at the Henry Hudson Town Houses, which will now be called Village Green Apartments. The project is expected to take about a year and a half, said Kelsey Smith, relocation specialist for Preservation Management Inc.
Charlie Allen, wearing a suit and tie
Henry Hudson’s redevelopment is an example of what I’ve dubbed ’subsidy portage’, where the current physical property is demolished and rebuilt, and the residents, subsidies, mortgage, and regulatory agreements all migrate from the old physical buildings to the new ones.
The complex is owned by Hudson Ave. Housing Associates LLC, a partnership made up of Preservation Management Inc., Evergreen Partners and Marathon Development.
The existing buildings, which were built in the early 1970s, are in poor shape and are not energy-efficient, said Smith.
Remarkably, some properties are worth negative value — the land would be more valuable if they were torn down. This particular property was a maze of Texture-111 siding, flimsy stick-built construction, and sloping roofs that invited water in to every crevice.
“They’re just old, and they really have to come down,” she said.
Yet the Town of
The kind of housing they like in
So the challenge became how to do a ‘rolling rehab,’ demolishing and rebuilding some of the buildings in phases, and moving residents around from old to new.
Building 44 is scheduled to come down next week, followed by buildings 21 and 25. Residents of buildings being demolished have been moved into vacant apartments at the complex, Smith said.
Construction of the building that will replace Building 40 is tentatively scheduled to begin on Aug. 27, Smith said.
I’m also particularly happy because my for-profit company and I took on this problem four years ago. When we were contacted by the investor limited partners, who were seeking some resolution of their risk, we realized that for the property to be viable, it needed to be comprehensively recapitalized, with very substantial new resources. That, in turn, meant it would have to be sold, and to the right buyer — which, in turn, meant we had to preserve the status quo for several years. But it got done, and the demolition is the first step.
Subsidy portage is challenging, as Charlie and his team discovered when they were doing site prep for the demolition, for, as the Post Star reports, before the Townhouses, there were other dwellings, and they had to be investigated:
Archaeologists digging through the area around the Henry Hudson Town Houses complex discovered an early-20th century Model T engine block, with original pistons, discarded in the pit of a former outhouse.
“It’s along the lines of one of the neatest things I’ve ever found,” said Tracy Miller, project director with Hartgen Archeological Associates.
COURTESY OF TRACY MILLER, HARTGEN ARCHEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. A Model T engine block sits in the soil and coal ash that filled in an outhouse from the late 1800s to early 1900s.
An antique car expert dated the engine to between 1909 and 1919, said Steve Riester, an archeologist working on the project.
We forget that before there was new construction, there were other dwellings,
About 70 houses, some dating back to the mid-1800s, were demolished when the townhouses were built [In the early 1970's -- Ed.]. Using historic maps, the archeologists identified two former housing lots on the townhouses property that were easily accessible under a parking lot and playground.
Though we call Henry Hudson ‘new construction,’ in fact it was a demolition-rebuild of urban renewal, scouring a decaying part of downtown Glens Falls and moving in ‘those people‘ in hopes of arresting flight to the suburbs.
Artifacts discovered during the dig, which began two weeks ago and is expected to end Friday, will provide insight into how French-Canadian immigrant neighborhoods compare with Irish and German immigrant neighborhoods previously studied in
The original St. Alphonsus Church on
and they went somewhere to die:
The archaeology firm is studying what once were foundations and backyards of a house and a four-unit apartment building that were demolished when the townhouses were built between Broad Street and Hudson Avenue in the early 1970s.
Under Federal law, when HUD subsidy is involved, it’s the owner’s cost to excavate them:
Federal and state laws require an archaeological review be done before the start of any construction funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Miller said.
A team of archaeologists from Hartgen Archeological Associates maps and surveys a dig under a parking lot at the Henry Hudson Town Houses on Wednesday morning.
Digging up the past brings curious reminders of days gone by:
Apparently the outhouse pit was being used as a garbage dump, because it was filled with coal ash and other discarded items such as old bottles, Miller said. Artifacts uncovered elsewhere on the dig site led archaeologists to believe a young child died of an infectious disease sometime around the early 1900s, Miller said.
A baby carriage, pieces of dolls and other toys were buried along with medicine bottles in a garbage pit.
A late-1800s baby carriage sits at the Henry Hudson Town Houses dig site Wednesday. Archaeologist Kevin Moody helped unearth the carriage and said there were many dolls and childrens’ items at that location.
Evergreen Partners, the Maine-based real estate group redeveloping the townhouses complex, plans to use the historical report as the basis of an information kiosk to be placed in the community room of the new complex, Miller said.
Archaeologist Kevin Moody explores a trash pit in on exploratory dig at the Henry Hudson Town Houses on Wednesday morning. Moody was finding bottles, pottery, beads and buttons from the early 1900s. A team of archaeologists from Hartgen Archeological Associates were surveying the site at the Henry Hudson Town Houses before construction starts on the new apartment buildings.
Artifacts being uncovered will be turned over to the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and likely will ultimately go to the
The archaeology firm will prepare a report of their findings and the historical context.
The study comes at an opportune time, as the city is about to celebrate its centennial next year, Akins said. “It’s great to see some of these pieces of history pop out, whether it be 1910 or the various stories of our family histories,” he said.
Even after some properties go somewhere to die, the past is ever with us.
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