Owner Byrne Dairy has no current plans for new construction
By Jason Emerson
The three derelict buildings of the former Robert Equipment Company, a longtime eyesore on Route 20 in the hamlet of Nelson, have been demolished and, for the foreseeable future, the land will remain open space. What will happen to the vacant lot, owned by Byrne Dairy, is a major question as the hamlet works to improve its aesthetics and increase its commercial appeal.
Roberts Equipment, established in the 1950s by Walter Roberts, was a full-service construction equipment and plow equipment dealer that had multiple municipal contracts around the state. The company had locations in Nelson, Rochester and Buffalo, with the original office and showroom at 3250 U.S. Route 20 in Nelson. It was a “multi-million-dollar business” that employed more than two dozen local residents and had a large economic impact on the area, said Joe Deyo, a former employee of Roberts Equipment and currently the Nelson town highway supervisor.
The company went bankrupt in about 2001, and the land and buildings have been vacant ever since. About five years ago, SonByrne Sales, the parent company of Byrne Dairy, purchased the land and buildings for the cost of back taxes. The company was looking to build a Byrne Dairy on the property (both Nice and Easy and Stewart’s also looked at the property), but ultimately did not because there was no public water or sewer connections in Nelson.
For the first few years of its ownership, SonByrne kept the property in good shape, but for the past few years they had to be contacted — sometimes officially by the town codes enforcement officer — and asked to properly maintain the site and keep it in good appearance, said Jen Marti, Nelson town councilor and board liaison for planning and zoning, and also a direct neighbor of the property.
“By Oct. 30, 2017, the property had not been maintained on a regular basis for about two years — and that’s when Toby, my dog, came home one night smelling of diesel fuel; she was covered in fuel oil,” Marti said.
It had been raining steadily all day, and, after checking the area, Marti discovered standing water all over the SonByrne property that was filled with diesel oil. The state Department of Environmental Conservation was called to the site, cleaned up the fuel oil and determined that a pipe to a 1,000-gallon buried fuel tank behind a building was sticking out of the ground and had somehow been knocked askew. The new angle of the pipe allowed it to catch rainwater off the roof of the building, which filled the tank to the point that the fuel oil inside got pushed out, Marti said.
SonByrne officials responded immediately and emptied out the entire oil tank that night, Marti said. The company also did all environmental cleanup suggested by the DEC.
“They were incredibly responsive; we could not have asked for better,” Marti said.
Marti kept in touch with Christian Brunell, property manager for SonByrne Sales, about the situation and the property as a whole, and eventually asked him to look at the “eyesore” the old Roberts land and dilapidated buildings had become. “I said, you have been disrespecting our community for four years [by the lack of site maintenance] and I asked him, would this be okay in your neighborhood?” Marti said. “He said no; so I said, then why is it okay in mine?”
SonByrne then took steps to demolish all three former Roberts Equipment buildings — the office, back workshop and a pole barn — remove at least two oil tanks from underground and generally clean up the three-acre property, Marti said. She said they did asbestos abatement for the buildings and recycled all the cement blocks and metal from the property.
“It’s been a real turnaround,” said Nancy Demyttenaere, the neighbor on the other side of the SonByrne property and also a member of the Town of Nelson Comprehensive Plan committee. “We like the open air.”
Demyttenaere said that what happens next on that property, which lies in the very heart of Nelson, is the “big question” for the town as well as for SonByrne.
The results of a recent survey mailed to every hamlet resident showed that people want more places for food and drink in Nelson; they also want more outdoor recreational opportunities and maybe a food store, said Marti.
While Christian Brunell, property manager for SonByrne Sales, did not respond to calls for comment, Marti said he told her there are no plans imminent for development on the site.
“What happens on this parcel is part of a much larger question of, how do we use the assets of the town to make a more stable economic engine?” Demyttenaere said. “It’s a multifaceted conundrum.”
