ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION
COHOES, N.Y. » Mayor Shawn Morse says his administration is slowly making progress on fulfilling a campaign promise to demolish burned-out buildings throughout the city.
In the first 15 months since taking office, Morse said five such buildings have already come down, with more expected to be removed throughout the year.
“One of the promises that I made was that we would clean up the city,” said Morse.
Although five buildings may not seem like many, Morse explained a lot of legal steps are needed before a building can be demolished. The city also tried work in cooperation with building owners, the mayor said.
“There is a lot of legal and technical issues with knocking buildings down,” explained Morse, “but we made it a top priority, and I’m proud to say that we have knocked down five and there’s another building coming down pretty soon in the middle of our downtown. A lot of these buildings actually have been sitting around for five or six years.”
Morse said only a few such buildings remaing standing, but pledged they will also come down eventually.
“We hope to have every burned-down building either fixed or taken down within the next few months,” said Morse.
City officials believe that by knocking down these dangerous eyesores, they can make the Spindle City more appealing to residents and visitors alike.
“You want to have a community that people can be proud of,” said Morse. “You want people to come through your community and say ‘Wow, what a beautiful place to live, play and raise your kids.’ It’s hard to have that if the first thing they see is burned buildings”
Morse said officials have pushed to keep the city’s cost of the demolition work down by getting insurers of the properties to pay at least a portion of demolition costs.
“Right now, a lot of the insurance [companies] have paid,” said More. “The city had to make some investments, but we’re going after the insurance companies to make sure we get our money back. Sometimes you have to invest in yourself to make yourself a better place, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Morse said the city receives calls every day from developers interested in investing in the city.
“For every building that goes down, somebody’s calling that they want to build it back up,” said Morse.