MALONE — Entering its third week the demolition portion of removing the Flanagan and Lashomb buildings in the village has wrapped up and efforts at the work site are now focusing on removing debris, bringing in fill and site restoration.
The plan for this week includes back filling both the Flanagan and Lashomb properties once debris is removed, according to Wayne Drake, an operator and foreman at the job site from Binghamton-based Gorick Construction Co.
“This Wednesday we’ll probably start back filling the Flanagan,” Drake told the Telegram, “We’ll move right on to cleaning out the Lashomb Building this week. We’ll start loading the Lashomb Building on Tuesday after we get the Flanagan all cleaned out.”
According to Drake, the tentative goal is to restore Main Street’s traffic pattern to normal on Monday, May 4.
“On Monday we will be opening Main Street back to normal traffic patterns,” Mayor Andrea M. Dumas said, “They’ll have a flagger on Elm Street but there will be a flagger just to help their trucks in and out of the driveway.”
During site restoration Drake said the material that goes into the site will be compacted down and graded.
“It’s going to be sloped to the sidewalk from the high side down to the sidewalk,” he said, adding the project remains on schedule, “Everything has been on schedule, a few less material than what was anticipated for the Flanagan so far, everything has been going really well.”
Drake said weather conditions did not slow down the removal of either building.
“Usually, the only time the weather is going to effect us is when we start back filling, we can’t put mud down,” he said, “On the demo side weather doesn’t effect us at all.”
Dumas said the debris from both buildings is being hauled to the Franklin County Solid Waste Authority, with the county covering tipping fees from the Flanagan and the village covering the fees from the Lashomb Building.
Dumas said Atlantic Testing Laboratories will be on site monitoring back filling operations once they get underway, adding back filling and compaction work at the site is anticipated to end within 15 days.
“Once the fill is done they are done and will be heading out,” she said, “We are in the process of working with our attorneys right now to get language together to start selling these two lots.”
Dumas said she hopes salvaged items from the Flanagan and Lashomb buildings can be incorporated into whatever comes next.
“We would love to have somebody that buys these lots that will incorporate some of the stone that we saved and some of the other artifacts back onto the property,” she said, “We can’t make them but we are really going to strongly suggest they incorporate them back onto the property.”
Gorick Construction was the lowest bidder in November 2025 when Franklin County legislators gathered to open bids for the planned demolition project, with the winning bid coming in at $1,198,800.
In May 2024, county legislators voted in favor of entering into an inter-municipal agreement with the village of Malone for a shared services plan to demolish the Flanagan. Under the agreement the county will pay for the demolition of the Flanagan and be reimbursed by the village through proceeds from the property’s sale once demolition is complete.
The county’s vote followed a vote by Malone’s village trustees in April 2024 to move forward with engineering services for the derelict building’s demolition, when trustees voted on a resolution to award the bid to Aubertine and Currier at a cost of $94,875.
The village officially took over ownership of the Flanagan in November 2023.
Village trustees voted to move forward with and pay for the demolition of the Lashomb Building earlier this month.
The Flanagan was built in 1914 to replace a smaller structure built in 1857, and has sat vacant ever since a fire in 1997.
“It’s been pretty emotional knowing that for 29 years I’ve driven by it every day and the first day watching it come down was pretty emotional because we are hitting many parts of peoples desires and lives,” she said, “Some people wanted it gone, some people wanted us to keep it, we played this role of trying to keep the community happy, which we can’t always do, and it was turning into a big public safety issue and it was a concern. After 29 years we had to move forward.”
According to Dumas, public safety concerns and a desire to move forward led to a renewed effort to bring the Flanagan down over the past few years.
“It was a building that was sitting there for 29 years and I don’t know exactly how many years they weren’t paying taxes, but it was many years,” she said, “We foreclose on properties that don’t pay taxes. We needed to move forward with this building. There were pieces of the building falling off, we were struggling and worrying about somebody getting hurt.”
Dumas said the project is part of ongoing efforts including the Downtown Revitalization Initiative to restores the community’s downtown.
“After 29 years there was this big building sitting there vacant with tattered windows and broken pieces of cement all over the ground,” she said, “It was something that everybody driving through our community, coming from Canada, coming from Route 11, from the east end of town had to drive right by this dilapidated building, people coming from the west end too. We want pride in our community and we want our downtown back.”