Building demolition begins at former United Hospital site

August 17, 2023 at 4:08 a.m.

The long arm of a demolition excavator slowly eats away at the first portion of the multi-winged hospital building on the former United Hospital site at 406 Boston Post Rd. in a controlled demolition on Monday, Aug. 14. (Jananne Abel/Westmore News)

The first signs of building demolition on the former United Hospital property at 406 Boston Post Rd. appeared last Friday, Aug. 11, leading people like Port Chester Trustee Bart Didden and others to post on Facebook that it was about time. Others proclaimed that it was sad to see the structures come down.

Checking out the site in person on Monday, Aug. 14 and snapping some photos from across the street in the Gateway Shopping Center parking lot, this reporter was engaged by a woman from Cos Cob waiting for her husband who was shopping at Whole Foods. She found the sight sorrowful as her children were born at the hospital 35 and 37 years ago. Although she lives in Connecticut, all her doctors are in New York. It’s a shame United had to close, she said—even though it was already 18 years ago.

    Demolition creates dust which is being mitigated by water being sprayed on the work area and air is being monitored at six locations throughout the 12-acre portion of the former hospital site the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is monitoring. Jananne Abel|Westmore News
  

The next day, from the same location, a Port Chester man sat in his truck staring at the demolition across the Post Road. Not reminiscing, he was more concerned about the added traffic a new development on the site will bring, saying it’s bad enough today and more people living there will only make the congestion worse. “I think it’s time to move out of Port Chester,” he said.

The 15.45-acre site is part of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Brownfield Cleanup Program, having been accepted into the program which encourages the voluntary cleanup of contaminated properties known as “brownfields” so they can be reused and redeveloped in October 2020. Title to the site was transferred from Starwood to Boston Post Road Owner LLC in December 2020, and the Brownfield Cleanup Agreement was amended to add the new owner.

As such, the DEC is overseeing preparation of the site for redevelopment, from remedial investigation of the environmental hazards to its cleanup before and after demolition and the razing of the buildings themselves.

Capital Industries is the demolition contractor, the same company that razed the charred buildings on South Main Street following a fire earlier this year, will soon be taking down the Steillman ladies clothing store next to the police station on North Main Street to make way for a self-storage facility and will be demolishing the structures at 27-45 N. Main St. to make way for a mixed-use residential development.

Before a controlled demo of the first hospital building began last Friday, the one in which the maternity ward was located, environmental abatement was undertaken and everything was removed from inside the structures, that work having begun in February.

Demolition of the buildings that comprised the main hospital complex will be complete toward the end of the year and 999 High St., the staff residence, will follow sometime thereafter, according to a spokesperson with knowledge of the project. Structures include a multi-winged hospital building, an MRI building, an office building, a laundry building, a power/boiler plant, a garage and other ancillary buildings.

On Monday, the long arm of a demolition excavator carefully ate away at the side of the hospital building, with small amounts of dust being created and pieces of building material breaking off and falling to the ground. By Tuesday, a section of the structure was gone and the mist being sprayed from above over the work site for dust control was more obvious.

The job includes site-specific protocols for air monitoring during building demolition activities, according to the Remedial Investigation Work Plan. There are six stations throughout the property that do the monitoring.

    A war zone? No, it’s just the start of demolition of the multi-winged hospital building on the former United Hospital site at 406 Boston Post Rd. on Monday, Aug. 14 to make way for a new mixed-use community.
  

The site is zoned for over 1 million square feet of development. Rose Associates and BedRock Real Estate Partners received final site plan approval from the Village of Port Chester on Oct. 17, 2022 to redevelop it into a mixed-use community comprised of a half-acre of open green space surrounded by multi-family housing, retail and restaurant spaces, a boutique hotel and assisted living senior housing.

“Port Chester is one of metropolitan New York’s most exciting villages and we are thrilled to start work at this property that’s been vacant and unused for far too long,” said Amy Rose, president and CEO of Rose Associates, in a written statement shortly after the approval. “In addition to hundreds of apartments, we’ll be creating attractive amenities that will be accessed through a much-improved streetscape along Boston Post Road.”

Plans call for 775 multifamily rental apartments, 90 independent living apartments and 110 assisted and memory care units, a 120-key boutique hotel, more than 18,000 square feet of retail space and associated parking lots.