Station B Starts Disappearing

A piece of New Haven’s power history is coming down.

Heavy-duty machinery began ripping into the two-story walls of English Station’s smaller structure on Tuesday, knocking apart the Grand Avenue-facing building that once burned coal to keep the lights on in the Elm City.

The deteriorating 25,000-square-foot structure, dating to the late 1800s, is all that remains of the original power plant started by the New Haven Electric Light Company, which was eventually overshadowed by the main plant, four times its size, that United Illuminating constructed behind it in the late 1920s.

While both plants have long since been decommissioned, the site still needs to be cleaned up, especially from the polychlorinated biphenyls and arsenic in the soil. Under a partial consent order signed in 2015, United Illuminating is currently conducting the $30 million remediation, while the property’s actual owners remain hidden behind limited-liability companies.

After a string of suspect deals, involving several accused scammers, the smaller station is owned by the New York-based Haven River Properties, LLC. The company’s agent has declined to talk about what’s planned for the site.

Even though neighbors had dreamed of a gallery space, like the Tate Modern, right at the entrance to Fair Haven, city inspectors condemned the smaller building, known as ​“Station B,” after bricks and mortar began falling off its facade and finding that almost half the roof was gone..

The demolition, which is being done by the Shelton-based John J. Brennan Construction Co., should take ​“a good month,” said Jim Turcio, the city’s building official.

Under a cloudy sky on Tuesday afternoon, a hydraulic excavator drove out from a narrow driveway beside Mill River, where a guy had just pulled in his reels without a catch.

Turning onto Grand Avenue, the driver had to keep the machine’s long-reaching extension just at the right level: too high and it would take down the overhead power lines; too low and it would bash against the ground.

It made a tight, screeching turn around the metal pylon that held up the wires and pulled up right against the middle of the building. Other green-shirted construction workers had already laid down tarps, weighted with hay bales and watered with a hose, to catch the dusty debris.

The machine itself had been hooked up with battered extension that resembled an eagle with an underbite, ready to pick at the bricks with its beak. A biker pulled over to watch, thinking of wrecking balls of the past.

Behind the excavator’s controls, the driver sent the bird-head skyward, took a bite out of one corner, nuzzled it right up to the building’s wall, and with a blink-quick motion, toppled the whole thing over. With a loud crash, the bricks tore through what was left of the wooden roof and landed inside. The driver then dragged the head along the remaining wall to knock off any loose bricks.

Once Station B is down, United Illuminating will remediate the pollution on the land around it, then decide what to do with the main building. The utility is aiming to finish the work required under the partial consent order by year’s end.