SCHENECTADY — Demolition crews on Friday began hacking away at the former Coyne Textile building, an Erie Boulevard eyesore.

Deteriorated beyond the point of easy reuse, the former commercial laundry was marked for removal earlier this year when the owner concluded it was worth more as a piece of land than as a structure.

The structure totaled 27,500 square feet, more than its small frontage on Erie Boulevard would suggest. The building stretches almost back to Front Street and is considerably wider toward the rear.

Coyne shut down more than a decade ago, when the building was in much better shape but the neighborhood was significantly shabbier. 

It sat vacant and deteriorating while Mohawk Harbor was built on a brownfield to the north, a former car wash was demolished and replaced with an apartment building to the north, and a former railroad freight depot across the street was replaced with a convenience store.

Erie Boulevard itself was completely rebuilt and beautified in the interim.

The Schenectady County Metroplex Development Authority considers 1435 Erie a key parcel in continuing redevelopment efforts, but it and commercial Realtors were unable to entice anyone to redevelop the site, which has some ground contamination.

An LLC that held the property as an investment sold it at auction in 2018 for $103,000 to a downstate investor who also had no success in marketing it and also didn’t fix the roof leaks that degraded the structure. 

Metroplex will contribute half the cost of demolition, up to $68,000,

The work is being done by Dan’s Hauling & Demo, which started on the Front Street side of the building Friday morning. The crew will work its way forward through the structure and expects to have it leveled all the way to Erie Boulevard sometime in the next two weeks.

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