Tow truck and all, Mark Nadeau’s pull-down of the front porch at the former Lambert’s Sunday was legal.
That’s the determination of Cobleskill Mayor Mark Galasso and Codes Enforcement Officer Mike Piccolo.
While others were settling in to watch the Super Bowl Sunday, Mr. Nadeau was supervising the dismantling of the front porch at the once-grand United State Hotel.
The porch-pull prompted a flurry of calls to Mayor Galasso’s office Monday, but the real question, he said, was only whether the porch contained asbestos.
Mr. Nadeau has already removed the rear of the building—the former Harmony Acres—where a study by CT Male Engineers determined there was no asbestos.
He can’t, however, take down the main building until he comes up with $60,000 for New York State-mandated asbestos removal.
But that left the question of whether there was asbestos in the porch after village officials said a tow truck was used to pull it down late Sunday afternoon.
“I read through the [engineer’s] report three times just to make sure and there’s no record of asbestos on the porch,” Mr. Piccolo said Tuesday, after getting a copy of it.
“As far as the village is concerned, it was legal to take it down.”
Even if there had been asbestos in the porch, Mayor Galasso said, removing it wouldn’t have violated any village laws.
“The village has no authority to regulate this [asbestos],” he said Monday. “The only reason we’re looking into it is because we’ve been getting a lot of calls.”
Mr. Nadeau has been issued a demolition permit for the building, Mr. Piccolo said, but that work was put on hold after engineers determined there was asbestos in the main structure.
If there had been asbestos in the porch, removing it would have been in violation of Department of Environmental Conservation—not village—law and would have been subject only to a DEC fine.
Built as the United States Hotel in 1820, the building was best known as Lambert’s, a clothing store, and later, Harmony Acres, an arts and crafts supply store.
The wood-frame structure burned last May in an electrical fire.
Flames tore through the roof and an upstairs apartment and volunteers were called in to help from a dozen different fire departments.
Mr. Nadeau bought the building from owner Tom Blair with plans of turning it into commercial space.
Both of the building’s tenants have since moved to nearby space.