The 247 147-year-old single-family home at 182 Derby Ave. was in terrible shape, according to city officials. It had been on and off the blight list for years.
The blight list is a list of neglected houses. Owners are fined $100 a day for ignoring the properties.
The owners of the Derby Avenue home, an elderly couple, owed back taxes. The house had not been occupied for some time. One of the owners passed away in 2014.
The property was put out to auction by the city in December 2014. The city was the only bidder, though city officials would not talk about their intentions for the property.
Click here for a previous Valley Indy story on the sale.
A demo crew, NEWS, LLC of Wethersfield, took it down Friday.
The company was the lowest bidder for the demo work. The city is paying $38,450.
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Carmen DiCenso, president of the Derby Board of Aldermen, said officials assessed the house after buying it.
“We could not sell it as-is. It was a safety issue,” he said. “The floors were moving as you walked on them. The wood was rotted. The roof was leaking. It was in very bad shape.”
DiCenso said he hopes the property will become a parking lot.
The city will try to sell the lot to neighbors on Derby Avenue.
“We’re going to offer it to parties on both sides of the property to buy, to be used strictly for parking,” DiCenso said. “We won’t let it be rebuilt as a house.”
Derby Avenue is densely populated with old multi-family houses and condos. The city has been trying to ease density there by taking down buildings that pose a threat to the neighborhood.
“Since the mayor instituted the blight committee, we’ve knocked down I think five houses now. We’ve raised well over $100,000 through tax liens. The money that comes from blight that goes into a fund that we can use to knock down these buildings,” DiCenso said.
The city said Tuesday there is $221,000 in the Derby blight fund.
DiCenso said the city wants to knock down Derby Feed and New England Sheet Metal, two buildings in the city’s stagnant redevelopment zone.
Mayor Anita Dugatto grew up on Derby Avenue.
“It’s a dense area, and now we’re opening it up so people can see the beautiful (Naugatuck) river,” the mayor said.
