Mt. Pleasant Approves Demolition of Decaying Hawthorne House
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The Mount Pleasant Town Board approved the demolition of an abandoned house in Hawthorne last week and officials are hopeful they will eventually recoup the back taxes and the cost of the work.
While the teardown of the one-and-a-half-story wood frame house at 354 Manhattan Ave. will not be immediate, the board’s vote authorized the town to take the necessary steps to knock down the structure.
The town will have to hire an animal control expert to make sure the house has been cleared of any wildlife, said Building Inspector Sal Pennelle. At the opening of the public hearing on Dec. 27, one neighbor remarked that he had seen vermin and raccoons on the property and entering and exiting through spaces that had appeared in the outside walls and broken windows.
“We don’t want to start to take the building down and you have all sorts of things running around,” said Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi. “So the building will be cleaned out prior to the building being taken down.”
Steps will also have to be taken to disconnect the utilities before demolition, said Town Attorney Darius Chafizadeh.
Once those steps are completed and a contractor is retained, demolition would likely take only one day, Pennelle said.
The town hired an engineer and an architect last year to show the courts that the house was unsafe and presented a danger to the community before it would move forward with the demolition. Their reports were returned in the fall.
The property has been owned by a Betty A. Smith, but Smith died in November 2012. Since that time the house has steadily deteriorated with no family members or any other party having stepped forward to claim and take care of the property. Last year, the town hired a landscaper to clear the property of the overgrown foliage that had nearly obscured the house from view.
Initially, the Town Board believed that the property taxes were still being paid, but town records show that it is more than $160,000 in arrears.
Chafizadeh said the town is first going through the courts to initiate a formal tax foreclosure procedure, which has begun. Once the property has been foreclosed, it will be put on the market through an auction, he said. It is expected that the town will get reimbursed for the taxes, but that part of the process is expected to be protracted, perhaps taking as long as a year.
“I don’t see it happening in the next few months,” Chafizadeh said of the eventual sale of the property. “It just takes long for the courts to move. Then the town in any sale will get fully reimbursed its back taxes and penalties and interest, so taxpayers won’t lose out on that.”
Several neighbors of the property attended the continuation of the public hearing last Tuesday. When the board voted unanimously to demolish the house, there was a burst of applause.
“It is an eyesore, it is unsafe, we can only imagine what is in there, and I know all my (fellow) residents on the block feel the same exact way,” said Manhattan Avenue resident Gina Harwood.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
