(File photo, Steve Thurston, 2021)
53 Putnam St. in downtown Saratoga Springs underwent a "brown site" clean-up. Habitat for Humanity plans to build a mixed-income condominium on the site.
A brownfield site in downtown Saratoga Springs, the former location of a gas station and laundry service from early last century, will undergo remediation in November, according to a state Department of Environmental Conservation newsletter.
Putnam Resources LLC and a 3rd party engineering firm, will handle the remediation of the property at 53 Putnam St., which contains volatile organic compounds and other harmful pollutants.
The site sits across the street from the library parking lot, and between Phila Street and Gardner Lane, is fenced and is grown-over. Ownership is listed as 53 Putnam St. Inc, in city records.
According to Saratoga Springs Planning Commission documents from 2020 and earlier, the site would become a small pocket park for a time before a mixed-use building is constructed there.
However, Susan Barden, a senior planner with the city, said her department never approved the park or the building.
“It’s still in the planning phase, and [I] haven’t heard from the applicant in quite some time,” she said in an interview today.
The primary contaminants of concern at the site are metals, says the DEC newsletter, "which are present in the surface soils site-wide; petroleum-related VOCs, which are present in the soil and groundwater within the western portion of the site; and chlorinated VOCs, which are present in the soil and groundwater within the eastern portion of the site. Petroleum product has been identified on top of the water table in several of the groundwater monitoring wells."
Remediation will remove the VOCs and biologically treat the chlorinated VOCs on site. DEC oversees the process and works with companies in these situations.
Putnam Resources will prepare a Final Engineering Report and submit it to the DEC when the work is completed. Once the requirements have been achieved, the DEC will approve the report and issue a Certificate of Completion to the applicant, the newsletter says. The certificate allows for construction and tax credits to help defray the clean-up costs.
According to the newsletter, the site was developed in the early 1900s with a one storey concrete block, slab-on-grade building and was used as an ice-skating rink and garage until about 1925, when the building was used for dry cleaning and laundry services.
From 1960 to 1986, the property lay vacant then used as truck storage into the 2000s. It was demolished as part of the redevelopment in 2019.