Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
03-22-09 - One burned in a spectacular and suspicious blaze on a hot August night in 1994; others fell victim to the ravages of neglect and time. Now, all of the former mill buildings in the Stockport hamlet of Stottville are disappearing from the landscape and may soon be replaced by new construction.
But questions remain about the project that is removing from a once thriving mill town the vestiges of its past which have become decades old eyesores. Town officials aren’t sure of the names of the two men removing the mills and don’t have their contact information. |
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Stockport Town Councilman Jack Mabb said the three mill buildings, located on Town Garage Road and Chester Avenue, are being salvaged for their brick, steel, and wood. The salvage operation, which began years ago, has accelerated in the past several months.
The four-story mill building on Town Garage Road, which burned on August 2 and 3, 1994, in a blaze deemed suspicious by investigators, is visible from County Route 20/Atlantic Avenue and has been a blight on the town for years. A second two-story building at the intersection Town Garage Road and Route 20 has stood empty for decades, as has a five-story mill building on Chester Avenue.
Town Supervisor Leo Pulcher said the work is being done by Travis Jameson and Ron Guilder. The men, he said, have plans to develop the creekside properties once the demolition and salvage work is complete. Residential homes have already been mentioned for one of the parcels, Pulcher said. Jameson and Guilder are not listed in the telephone book and neither Town Clerk Sandra Novak nor Code Enforcement Officer Mario Ferrari has contact information for the contractors to learn more about those plans.
The mill buildings were last occupied by A. D. Julliard Company and L & B Furniture. The latter moved from Stottville to Hudson in the 1980s, restaged itself as LB Industries in the early 2000s, and went out of business last summer. Abandoned for decades, the mill buildings have fallen into disrepair.
The 1994 blaze raised questions about the ownership of the properties, since property tax bills had been piling up unpaid and no one stepped forward after the fire to claim ownership and clean up the mess. Pulcher said the county refused to seize the property for unpaid back taxes because of potential pollution on the property caused by what is suspected to have been years of chemicals released into the ground and into Claverack Creek. Pulcher explained that the property was eventually removed from the tax rolls in a maneuver to eliminate the county’s responsibility to reimburse the school district for school taxes on the property that could not be collected. |
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The remains of the mill building on Town Garage Road.
The remains of the second mill building on Town Garage Road.
The remains of the mill building on Chester Avenue.
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In an effort to get the mills back on the tax rolls, Pulcher said, the late John Funk, former Stockport Supervisor, made a deal with Jameson and Guilder seven or eight years ago. In exchange for demolishing the buildings and salvaging and removing the debris, the two would be awarded the deeds to the land. That deal does not appear to have been put into a formal contract and no deadline for removing the mills was established.
“At this point,” said Pulcher, “we just want to get the property back on the tax rolls.”
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