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Village permits some work at Hotel Saranac

SARANAC LAKE – The village has issued a partial building permit to Roedel Companies, allowing some construction work inside the Hotel Saranac to begin.

Village Code Enforcement Officer Patrick Giblin said the permit he issued Aug. 17 covers work on the Main Street hotel’s elevators, rooms and corridors.

“My understanding is they got (the permit), and they’re getting their contractors ready,” Giblin said Monday.

New Hampshire-based Roedel Companies’ renovation of the hotel has ground to a halt in recent months, sparking questions from local residents and village officials.

“There doesn’t seem to be anybody in there at all,” Trustee Tom Catillaz asked at the village board’s Aug. 10 meeting.

Part of the reason for the delay, Giblin explained, is a back-and-forth between Roedel Companies’ engineers and the engineering firm the village hired to review the hotel’s thick packet of plans, Malone based-Beardsley Design Associates.

“They submitted blueprints,” he said. “(Beardsley) reviewed them with a list of stuff and gave it back to the Hotel Saranac engineers. What we were expecting was final plans, one more review and you’re good to go. What they were thinking was, ‘We’ll answer this. What about this?’ That wasn’t our contract at all with Beardsley.”

That was where things stood about two weeks ago, when the issue came up at the village board meeting, Giblin said. Since then, he said he got some of the answers he needed and worked with Mark Armstrong, Roedel Companies’ project manager, to issue a partial building permit for the massive project.

What other work is left to issue a permit for?

“There’s the kitchen. There’s the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning). There’s the boiler,” Giblin said. “There’s a lot of different things they have to do. They can get started on this other stuff, and as they’re updating their plans, we’ll review those.

“There’s nothing we want more than to get that place going. We’re all on the same team here.”

Asbestos abatement has also slowed the project down. The village let the developers replace two small roofs on the building, but asbestos was found on the roofs. Armstrong said last month they’ve had a hard time finding a licensed asbestos abatement contractor because most are busy this time of the year.

Village Community Development Director Jeremy Evans said the Hotel Saranac is probably the largest renovation project the village has ever seen. That’s why the village has been working to approve it in phases, he said.

“It’s complicated,” Evans told the village board Monday night. “There’s 100 pages of plans, and there’s several hundred pages of specifications the applicant originally submitted. As we’ve been able to feel comfortable that they have insurance and other documentation, we’ve given them partial permits to get going on different phases of the project.”

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say the village held things up,” Evans added later. “We get that complaint every single day of the week. Our responsibility is to make sure it’s done properly. You’re going to have hundreds of people there for events, and people sleeping there. … They had a pretty good set of plans, but they weren’t perfect. That’s why we had (Beardsley) help. Our goal has been to try to give them partial permits so they can keep moving, because everybody wants to see that renovated.”

The village hired the engineering firm in January at a cost not to exceed $10,000. Evans said the company is “pretty close” to that limit at this point.

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