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Restored To Life

Once Abandoned Building Gets A Major Makeover

By Eileen Jenkins , MARKETPLACE STAFF WRITER    Published on 8/12/2007

By now the last tenant has moved in, completing the turnaround of the once-dilapidated Homestead building in Mystic.

The 200-year-old edifice on Cottrell Street is part of the Mystic Fire District's 14-year overhaul of the former Cottrell Lumber Co. site, a process that saw the renovation of several buildings and the creation of the Mystic River Park. The Homestead building had once been home to the Mallorys, a prominent Mystic shipping family, but at some point became a rooming house and apartment house before being left empty for about 20 years.

But it wasn't just 20 years of abandonment that ravaged the house. Water spewing from pipes that were never shut off caused damage that Michael Scarpa vividly describes.

“It was a wreck. It. Was. A. Wreck. And it was scary. I was afraid to walk around because I thought I'd fall through the floors. It had been raining in there: The ceiling was falling in, the plaster was falling off the walls, there were holes in the floors.”

Scarpa is the owner of Coastal Construction Management, the Pawcatuck-based firm that did the $1.1 million Homestead renovation. Once he saw the pervasive damage, the path he would have to take was obvious.

“I knew the only way to do this would be to gut everything,” he says.

But it wasn't a typical demolition job, which is usually the easiest part of any remodeling project.

“To take the inside of this building apart and keep the building standing was the most challenging thing about it,” Scarpa says. “The only thing that remains is the original post-and-beam framework. That's it. So I couldn't just hire any demo crew. I had an experienced crew go in there and demo it properly. They knew what was structural, what had to stay, what could go ... ”

And what went were “layers and layers of plaster. We probably filled 12 dumpsters. We had a crew of four guys and I bet they spent three weeks on it. Usually the demo is fast, but remember we had to be careful not to knock the building down!

“There was no exterior framing — it was basically just the post-and-beam, exterior sheathing and the clapboard nailed to that. There were no 2x4s, like you'd see these days. If you had opened the front door and looked down, you would have seen the basement. If you had looked up, you'd have seen the roof. It was just an empty shell.”

So they put in all new framing, a new flooring system and studs around the exterior to install proper insulation and wiring. They replaced all the windows and exterior doors.

“(The fire district) wanted to keep the clapboard siding,” says Scarpa. “We had meetings about changing to a fiber-cement siding that wouldn't need any maintenance, but they wanted to keep the original so the building looked like it did before. And we completely removed the old porch framing and decking, but we kept the original ceiling and columns, and I'm glad — one of the columns is signed by one of the original carpenters.”

The result is a three-unit luxury apartment building. Each apartment has its own entrance, its own laundry facilities and its own separately metered utilities. One unit has use of the beautiful front porch, one has a large fenced brick patio and the third-floor apartment has a deck. There is off-street parking for the tenants and, because the building is owned by the fire district, there is a residential sprinkler system in use.

The apartments are roomy (the largest is 2,200 square feet, spans two floors and has 2.5 bathrooms), bright and all of them offer views of the water. Visitors have a hard time imagining the condition it had once been in, but Scarpa has photos to prove how big the challenge was.

“We don't usually do this kind of work, so it was intriguing,” he says. “Plus I liked doing it for the town, because my family lives here. It got rid of a blighted building and created an investment for the town.”