A vacant building that has been a blight on the West Webster hamlet for years is no more.
A crew hired by the town has demolished the former Webster Furniture Strippers building at Ridge and Gravel roads. Town officials expect that all the debris will be hauled off-site by next week, said Josh Artuso, Webster's director of community development.
We're very excited to have reached the milestone that we did this week of actually demolishing it," Artuso said. "And it's just one major step in a multi-step process that we're going to continue to pursue. It is a very high priority for the town."
Once the site is clear and the underground foundation removed, the corner lot will be filled, leveled, and seeded.
The building had been vacant for roughly 20 years and had deteriorated considerably over time. Town officials tried to find someone to rehabilitate it but were unsuccessful. More than a year ago, the town bought the property for $1 from the county, which had repeatedly tried to sell it at auction.
The town finalized a revitalization plan for the hamlet in 2023, and addressing the building at 600 Ridge Road was essential to its goals.
Artuso said the plan "highlighted the importance of having some type of neighborhood amenity or neighborhood scale, mixed-use type development. That ... could potentially be a coffee shop, or providing just basic services to the residents in the area — something to make it a more walkable and enjoyable place to be."
But the property's future use depends on a few factors.
For one, there are suspicions that the ground is contaminated. Once the debris is hauled away the town will pursue further testing, after an initial round was inconclusive, Artuso said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded Webster a brownfield assistance grant for that work.
That testing will determine whether any clean-up work or use restrictions will be necessary to redevelop the site. The town hopes the testing begins in the fall, but there is not a certain timeline, Artuso said.
Options for what could be put on the site are limited as the corner lot totals about one-fifth of an acre. But, said Artuso, the town has learned that the owners of a couple of adjoining properties intend to put them up for sale once the demolition cleanup is complete.
"Anyone with... a potential vision or a desire to potentially do a larger development, that opportunity may come to fruition in terms of what the town would like to see for future uses at that corner, the community led plan," Artuso said.
