By JOSEPH KELLARD
The contractor halted at the site was the third Alrose has employed to clean the property after the vacant supermarket burned down last November. The first contractor, Charles Levine, owner of B&A Demolition, which cleared some debris from the site the day after the fire, said he gave Alrose an analysis that revealed asbestos was present.
Levine expected Alrose to hire him for the subsequent general cleanup, but believes the developer found another contractor because B&A¹s analysis found up to 5 percent chrystotile asbestos in both the remaining floor and roof tiles. Since the DOL requires a specialized asbestos job even when traces of the chemical fiber are found on demolished property, Levine raised his price from over $100,000 for a general cleanup to about $250,000.
³[Alrose Group] knew from me that it¹s an asbestos project,² Levine said. ³I sent him the floor report on it ... It¹s a lot more money than a regular cleanup.²
³That¹s not true,² said Steve Goldfarb, co-owner of Alrose Group. ³We never hired them to do the complete cleanup. ... They have sour grapes because they lost the job.² Goldfarb added that Alrose Group solicited bids for a general cleanup and received one from a second contractor that was about $50,000 less than B&A¹s price.
Meanwhile, a second certified asbestos analyst filed an affidavit with the town stating that he conducted an asbestos investigation at the Foodtown property on Feb. 25, and declared the site ³free of any asbestos-containing material.² Asked about this affidavit, Goldfarb said, ³We had a permit company that sent out someone to do tests, and it came back clean.²
However, town spokeswoman Susan Trenkel said, ³At the Foodtown site, apparently we issued the demo permit based on an affidavit from an asbestos inspector ... [but] that was not accurate.²
After the second contractor failed to start the cleanup work on time, Alrose hired a third contractor, Goldfarb said. When that contractor began cleaning the site the week of March 19, the DOL had the town issue a stop order on March 24. The DOL has since taken its own asbestos samples at the site that tested positive.
³We have word that [Alrose Group is] in the process of hiring a licensed contractor...,² said DOL spokesperson Jean Genovese. ³They need to request a variance and also give us an asbestos project notification.²
Goldfarb said that Alrose Group has begun an asbestos cleanup, but he maintained that his company had environmental studies performed when it purchased the property before the fire, and that these came up asbestos-free. ³We even had another test done subsequent to that, which showed that it was clean, that there was no contamination,² Goldfarb said. ³And [the debris] could be hauled away, from my understanding.²
Goldfarb said the original general cleanup was to cost about $73,000, but that the mandated asbestos cleanup pushed it ³well over $200,000.² He added, ³Our insurance company doesn¹t have unlimited money to do this, and I think it¹s very unfair.²
Asked to provide documents of the original analysis that tested negative for asbestos, Goldfarb said, ³I¹m not sure I¹m going to be able to send anything on that because this is kind of a fluid situation, and lawyers are probably getting involved in all this nonsense.²
Alrose plans to build a King Kullen supermarket on the former Foodtown site, and purchased the adjacent building to possibly open either a CVS or Walgreen¹s pharmacy. ³Our intentions are good here,² Goldfarb said. ³They were never to put anyone in danger for anything. Our intentions are to rebuild an area in Oceanside that has been blighted for a while.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
