Puritan Laundry properties finally razed

Monday, March 6 was D-Day for the old Puritan Laundry and Car Wash buildings on Mill Avenue in New Philadelphia. Chemical spills from dry cleaning and car wash operations had kept potential buyers from considering the area for many years, according to a statement made by Mayor Joel Day last year.

Josh Mathias, the city’s zoning and building code administrator, said there are two separate operations happening simultaneously regarding the property.

“I tried to get the building demolition done with funding from an Ohio Brownfield grant, but after many months, we were told the project didn’t quite fit their mold,” he said. “So we’re just going to tear it down with our own money.”

Mathias said the cost of the initial demolition being conducted by Bridges Excavating is $12,900.

“That’s for the demolition of two standing structures, sign posts, light posts and the concrete bases, as well as capping off the wastewater line. We're not going to be disturbing any of the foundations or concrete pads because we don’t want to disturb the soil until we know what's going on,” he said.

And that’s the second part of what is happening right now. Mathias said there have been several environmental studies conducted over the years, but Day reached out to the Ohio EPA for assistance that will allow the city to move forward.

“They’re doing what's called a phase one and phase two assessment at the same time right now,” Mathias said. “In phase one there's a lot of document gathering and fact finding, just to see what all could have been on that property. And then phase two is the Ohio EPA conducting tests on water well samples.”

Mathias said evidence of that testing is what residents and visitors will see happening when they drive by the site, marked by drum barrels and yellow posts. “Those drums are collecting the water well samples. They’re letting water run into pipes, and they will test the water to see what chemicals are in the ground,” he said.

Mathias said that’s as far as things have gotten to date. “Once they collect that information, then they will give us a report, and the Ohio EPA can give us guidance on how to clean it up.”

Mathias said the teardown at the Puritan Laundry site is separate from the city’s other efforts to clean up dilapidated structures, which is totally dependent upon grant funding.

According to Day’s recently released State of the City report for 2022, the local Housing Code and the International Property Maintenance Code were used to identify unsafe structures within the city and order the violations to be corrected as part of that effort.

When violations went unabated, the city razed three properties, the total cost of which was $28,386, which will be fully reimbursed to the city.

Until the EPA test findings are analyzed, compiled and distributed to the city, it’s too soon to tell how much the total cleanup may cost, whether grant funding can be obtained to help defray those costs and what potential future uses could exist for the land.