Owner Calli Shelton walks through a sea of debris inside the former Dew Drop Inn. Demolition work started in the building this week. Shelton plans to turn the property into a new downtown bar and restaurant. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

SARANAC LAKE — Demolition work is in full swing at the former Dew Drop Inn on Broadway.

A crew from Schrader General Contracting stripped walls down to their studs, took up floors and removed old appliances, fixtures and furniture, according to owner Calli Shelton. She plans to renovate and reopen the downtown landmark as a restaurant called 27 Broadway, its street address, and a bar called Bootlegger’s.

“It feels great to finally reach this point,” Shelton said Friday. “It’s been a long time coming. I started this whole process a year ago last November. It was a year-and-a-half of kind of sitting on my hands and waiting. Now something is happening.”

Most of the building’s main floor restaurant space and half of the top level apartments have seen demolition work, Shelton said.

An asbestos inspection was also completed this week. It found some areas that will have to be abated.

“Randy Schrader and his team are working around that to do their total interior demolition,” she said. “Once they can get what they can do done, we’ll have the abatement company come in and do their part, and then we’ll be about ready for new construction.”

Shelton described this as the exploratory phase of the project. She’s hoping for a May 2018 opening, but “that’s just a hope and a prayer at this point.

“A lot of it depends on what we find as we’re tearing the building apart,” Shelton said. “A lot of it depends on financing. We’re trying to make it happen in a phased approach.”

In November, the village Board of Trustees approved a $200,000 economic development loan to Chicota Inc., a company formed by Shelton and her husband, Randy Coles, who are from Texas. They purchased the Dew Drop last year from prior owner Ed Dukett.

Shelton said at the time that the loan would allow for interior demolition and basic infrastructure work: plumbing, heating and electrical improvements.

This week, Shelton posted on Facebook pictures of items from the Dew Drop she is giving away, including old chairs, barstools and other odds and ends. A lot of people showed up to take them over the last few days.

“We would so much rather see these still usable items get recycled than sent to the dump,” Shelton said. “And there’s still some left if anyone else needs chairs or other items.”