Monticello, NY - Firefighters Burn Down Wrong Buildings At Request Of Developer
Monticello, NY - It's not uncommon for developers in the Catskills to ask local firefighters to burn down old summer bungalows, remnants from the days when the region was a popular vacation destination.
But when the Monticello Fire Department burned down a pair of bungalows, they destroyed the wrong buildings.
The bungalows were owned by a New York City couple who had stayed at the property last summer. They drove up to Monticello last week to check on the bungalows and found they had been torched.
Fire department officials say an employee of Concord Associates, a local developer, thought the bungalows were on the company's land and asked that they be burned down. The company says it was just a mistake.
But the couple who owned the bungalows aren't happy. They have reported the incident to the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department.
posted by VOS IZ NEIAS @ 8/24/2006 09:55:00 AM
3 Comments:
At 3:24 PM,
Anonymous said…
Monticello — For half a century, the Nachimovsky family has owned a 4½-acre property near Monticello. In its heyday, the land held the Ash Hotel and the Monticello Tentarena, a renowned Catskills theater.
On Aug. 14, Avraham and Myriam Nachimovsky drove from the city to Joyland Road to check on the two bungalows that are left. Avraham had stayed there last summer.
"We did not recognize the place. We passed it," said Myriam Nachimovsky. "We were in shock. We couldn't believe it was all gone."
Their two bungalows had been burned down, and their 40-foot trailer was gone.
"They call me up and tell me the houses are gone," recounts Myriam and Avraham Nachimovsky's son, Yoram Nachimovsky, a lawyer in New York City. "You can't just go and burn somebody's property."
At their son's urging, the couple gathered paperwork and reported the bungalow burning to the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department.
As it turns out, the Monticello Fire Department had burned the two bungalows months ago at the request of an employee of Concord Associates, developer Louis Capelli's local company. The employee apparently thought the bungalows were on Concord land.
Monticello fire Chief Glenn Somers said firefighters were told it was Concord property and burned down the buildings as they had other bungalows.
Henry Zabatta, a consultant working for Capelli, said it was purely a mistake.
"These bungalows were adjacent to our property, and we thought they were ours," Zabatta said. "It was an error. It wasn't done maliciously."
Concord Associates and firefighters have taken down about 50 old bungalows during the past three years.
The Nachimovskys' bungalows were nothing extravagant — a couple of bedrooms, a wrap-around porch — but they were theirs. They question how their bungalows were burned without any notice.
"He must know what property is his or not," Yoram Nachimovsky said. "They've offered my parents money for the property before."
Zabatta said Concord Associates may well have made an offer to the Nachimovskys, as they have to many others.
Yoram Nachimovsky said the family's bungalows were in good condition, there was furniture inside and his dad had stayed there last summer.
Zabatta said the bungalows that were burned were abandoned. "The fire department can attest to that also. They'll tell you what the bungalows were like. These were in the woods. They weren't livable."
The family just wants back what they had, Yoram Nachimovsky said.
"Put back the trailer. Put back the bungalows. Leave us where we were," he said. "And also, apologize."
At 11:02 AM,
Anonymous said…
this is so sullivan county.
a guy calls the FD and says i want that house of there burned down, yeh it belongs to me.
so they burn it down.
why check records, or ask for any sort of documentation?
they just burned it down because he said it was his.
At 1:12 PM,
Anonymous said…
I have a couple of buildings in nyc that needs to be burned down. Will they do that for me too? They charge a fee for this or they do it for free?
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