Down Goes The Ex-Nursing Home

Graffiti-covered brick walls and metal beams quickly crumbled into a pile of rubble Tuesday morning as an excavator struck the former nursing home at 240 Winthrop Ave.

After conducting a final search of the building to ensure no one was squatting inside, city officials and contractors initiated demolition of the abandoned buildings at 9:54 a.m.

The demolition marked a rare exertion of the city’s authority to knock down buildings deemed to be unsafe and insufficiently secured by the property owner.

The property at 240 Winthrop was once the site of a nursing home that shuttered in 2004. It’s owned by Connecticut Health Care Holdings LLC, a company controlled by Harry Dorvilier of Jamaica, N.Y.

After a fire broke out at the property last April, the city has escalated efforts to crack down on blight code violations — imposing fines that have accrued to over $190,000 as of Tuesday and moving to foreclose on the property, citing unpaid taxes. 

Read more about those efforts, as well as Dorvilier’s explanation of his plans for the property and his argument against the foreclosure, here and here. In 2019, the Board of Alders voted to up-zone the property to allow for the development of 128 new apartments — a project that Dorvilier’s company has yet to follow through on. Dorvilier told the Independent in June that he still wants to build new housing on the site, but that he needs city permission for a greater level of residential density in order for a development at this nearly five-acre site to break even financially.

Dorvilier did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

The city began searching the building on Monday afternoon to ensure no one was inside. The demolition itself was slated to take place throughout Tuesday, starting from the side closest to the street.

Once the building is fully knocked down, the city will clean up the debris over the course of the next 21 days, according to Livable City Initiative (LCI) Director Liam Brennan. 

Meanwhile, the city will impose a lien on the property equal to the cost of the demolition. The cost may vary due to the potential for unforeseen hiccups, said Brennan. He estimated that it will be in the hundreds of thousands.

On Tuesday morning, prior to knocking anything down, the city conducted one last sweep of the property to confirm that no one was on the premises. Officials determined that the property was completely unoccupied.

Next, the demolition contractors sprayed the building thoroughly with water to minimize dust.

City officials watched from the Winthrop Avenue sidewalk, holding up phone cameras and peering through the chain link fence.

“Seeing this come down, it’ll make the quality of life better for the neighborhood,” said LCI Deputy Director Mark Stroud.

The onlookers waited…. and waited….

Until finally…

Boom.