County legislature to decide on selling Rustic Barn property to neighbors for $500

GUILDERLAND — On Thursday night, the Albany County Legislature’s finance committee unanimously passed a resolution that would allow the neighbors of the derelict Rustic Barn property to buy it for $500, according to Legislator Mark Grimm who made the resolution.

Grimm, a Republican representing part of Guilderland, said he expects the sale to be approved by the full legislature at its next meeting, on Nov. 13.

“I’ve been in contact with the administration,” he said on Friday. “There’s no doubt it will pass.”

The neighbors, Ryan and Lucinda Caruso of 6685 Fuller Station Rd., agreed to accept the burden of cleaning up the property to create green space and gardens, Grimm told The Enterprise.

In response to Enterprise questions, Ryan Caruso emailed on Friday, “There is no guarantee we will receive the property. There likely won’t be a final decision made until the end of the year or even spring. We can not do anything further with it until ownership is transferred to us.”

He went on to say that the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, “At our prompting, due to concerns about water contamination … already came in and conducted a $50,000 chemical remediation of the building. But no further work can be done until ownership is completed.”

The Rustic Barn has been empty since its owner, Herbert Young, who sold wood stoves, antiques, and lawn-care products out of the property, died in 2013; he had no children. In Young’s final years, when he was in a nursing home, the property fell into tax arrears.

The current assessment roll for Guilderland still lists Herbert Young as the owner of the one-acre Rustic Barn property at 4852 Western Turnpike and gives it a full-market value of $121,176.

Asked about the discrepancy between the $500 the county will be getting for the property and the town’s assessment, Grimm told The Enterprise on Friday, “That’s between the town and the Carusos.”

In September, after the county signed off on the town condemning the barn, Ryan Caruso told The Enterprise, “Our understanding of the property, according to conversations with the town, is that the site is unbuildable. Due to the setbacks required from Route 20 and the adjoining wetlands on both sides that feed the Watervliet Reservoir, no building can be constructed on the premises. The only thing that can be done is to demolish the structure and plant some flowers.”

At the Sept. 5 Guilderland Town Board meeting, Supervisor Peter Barber estimated it would cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to demolish the building.

The abandoned property contains a one-story house with a slate roof, dating from the mid-19th Century, and the barn itself, which is older, as well as a two-story addition that seems to be from the 20th Century; all of those buildings are connected to one another, with the most recent section linking the original house to the barn. There are also several outbuildings in disrepair.

Ryan Caruso and his family moved to Guilderland in 2018, into what had been the old Fullers post office and general store, built in 1870. Since moving into their home five years ago, the Carusos have cleaned up their own property as well as refuse from the neighboring Rustic Barn property.

Late in 2018, Ryan Caruso sent photos to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation because he was concerned about chemicals he had come across —  many large bags of fertilizer near the stream between the two properties as well as chemicals in and around the Rustic Barn house.

The stream feeds into the Watervliet Reservoir, which is Guilderland’s major source of drinking water.

Chemicals in the house, Caruso told The Enterprise in 2018, included bags of chlordane, a pesticide that was banned by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 and which is associated with gastrointestinal distress and neurological symptoms in the case of short-term exposure, and with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when exposure is chronic.

Another chemical in the house was Sevin, or carbaryl, an insecticide that is not banned, but that has been largely replaced by other, less toxic alternatives. Another was a broadleaf herbicide, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, classed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, but not by the EPA, as a possible carcinogen.

The DEC subsequently conducted a cleanup of the site.

In 2019, the DEC told The Enterprise that the agency had “worked with contractor National Response Corporation to remove pesticides contained inside the building, which had no harmful effects to the environment.

“In addition, and out of an abundance of caution, DEC also monitored the excavation and safe disposal of soil in the areas of potential impacts where fertilizer was stored and where an oil tank was located. Follow up tests at the site met appropriate standards and there was no harmful effect on the nearby Watervliet Reservoir drinking-water supply or any nearby waterbodies. The cleanup is now complete ….”

Caruso told The Enterprise in September, “Since the first DEC cleanup in 2018, I had them come a second time in 2020 as part of DEC’s Clean Sweep program and they removed the remaining chemicals from the property. This was another 2-3 tons of loose chemicals, mostly fertilizer and pesticides, stored upstairs in the barn.”

Grimm wrote in an email to The Enterprise this week, “This was an unusual case where the property’s previous owner died without any family and the property remained there with pesticides and other chemicals present on the property. The state DEC did do some clean up due to the threat posed to a nearby stream. This resolution will give the neighbors more peace of mind and remove the blighted property from a high-traveled highway.”