A $300,000 renovation of a 160-year-old house in Verplank has ended instead in condemnation and demolition that could cost two contractors $2.5 million.
Melanie Butler accused Onyx Contracting Services, White Plains, and C. Correa Construction, Mount Vernon, of negligence, in a complaint filed on Nov. 5 in Westchester Supreme Court.
The plan was to renovate and expand the old house, the complaint states, but instead the contractors caused a “catastrophic failure such that the foundation no longer provided adequate load bearing of the structure.”
The property is on Kings Ferry Road at Lake Meahagh. Butler, of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, described the house as a historic home dating back to the 1860s. She bought it for $585,000 and mortgaged it for $801,000 in 2023.
She hired Onyx Contracting to renovate the house, according to the complaint, and Onyx hired C. Correa Construction for excavation and foundation work.
The work began in January. Within days, the project had to be stopped. Cracks developed in the facades and basement walls began to buckle.
Architect Marco S. Mandra concluded on Jan. 15 that the structure was too dangerous to enter or salvage.
“It is in the best interest of the owners and the town to have [the] building condemned and demolished,” he reported, “to create a safe construction site and allow the owners to rebuild from the ground up.”
EFI Global Engineering came to a similar conclusion. The entire foundation was compromised during excavation, an engineer reported, “due to the improper bracing provided by the contractor during the temporary shoring phase of construction.”
The Town of Cortlandt condemned the structure as unsafe, on Jan. 16. The house was razed on Aug. 26.
Butler accused the contractors of negligence, in part for “recklessly and with cavalier indifference [ignoring] the unambiguous instructions on the architectural plans.”
She is demanding $2.5 million to build a new house and to recover her out-of-pocket expenses.
Onyx Contracting did not reply to a telephone message, asking for its side of the story. Efforts to find contact information for C. Correa Construction were unsuccessful.
Butler is represented by White Plains attorney Joshua E. Kimerling.
