The debris on the site of a home which was illegally demolished on Beverly Road. Photo taken on March 17. Photo by Charlie Johnson
A contractor demolished a Brookline house without the proper permit, failed to turn off the gas and electricity before tearing down the building, and improperly handled asbestos there.
The demolition at 73 Beverly Road has sparked concern in the neighborhood and drawn the ire of the Brookline building department. State regulators have fined the contractor, and the town plans to do the same.
“It was the most egregious violation of building code I have seen in my 30 years on the job,” said Brookline Building Commissioner Dan Bennett.
The contractor, meanwhile, says they were honest mistakes. He told Brookline.News he thought the proper permits were in place and that he was told the utilities had been disconnected.
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Debris including a shattered toilet now litters the site, and the foundation and the chimney are all that still stands.
Carolyn Thall, who lives across the street, witnessed the demolition begin on February 28. The demolition took multiple days to complete.
“I was looking out my window just thinking, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look good,’” she said.
The home at 73 Beverly Road before it was demolished. Photo via Google Street View.
‘A mistake happened’
Built in 1950, the two-story house near the Baker School had been vacant since July 2023, when it was sold to Monica Ahluwalia and Sankalp Sehgal.
“This home seemed like something we could rehabilitate, renovate and rebuild to be the home of our dreams,” Sehgal told Brookline.News.
But they decided renovating it wouldn’t work. They decided to tear it down and to build a modern, energy-efficient house on the site.
Ahluwalia and Sehgal – who are living in Jamaica Plain with their two children while they wait for the new house to be built – hired Ian Teesdale’s company, IDR Construction Inc., to complete the project.
IDR demolished the interior of the house in September 2023 and applied for an exterior demolition permit in early 2024. Sehgal said he was under the impression that IDR had received that permit.
Teesdale said he assumed he had the correct permit when his crew began demolishing the house Feb. 28. After the demolition, he realized he had only obtained a partial demolition permit for the roof and rear wall.
“A mistake happened,” he said. “It was not an act of willful intent.”
Mike Harrington, who lives in the neighborhood, was driving past the house on the day the demolition began when he saw workers stripping the roof off the house.
“I just thought to myself, wow, it’s about time they got working on that, but it’s kind of weird they are starting it so late in the day on a Friday,” Harrington said.
Thall said she was concerned that no fence was put up before the demolition – a violation of state building code, according to Brookline building commissioner Dan Bennett.
“It was really sloppy and kind of weird,” Thall said. “There was a lot of dust, and nobody seemed protected.”
A couple of days later, the house was gone. Thall took a picture of the site after the demolition and sent it to the Brookline Preservation Commission, which reviews all demolition permits.
Jason Granai, a Brookline building department inspector, arrived at the site later that day.
Granai observed a makeshift electric pole sticking out close to the sidewalk, Bennett wrote in a report. The power and gas lines had not been cut off prior to the demolition, the report says.
The Brookline electrical inspector was notified to cut the power to the house after the demolition. The attempt was unsuccessful, prompting Eversource to come in to cut the power.
Sehgal said he thought that the electricity had been shut off months before the demolition. But an Eversource spokesperson said in an email to Brookline.News that the company has no record of receiving requests to cut the power on the site before the demolition started.
The inspector smelled gas at the site and notified the Brookline Fire department.
When firefighters arrived, they found a live gas line, Bennett’s report says. The firefighters tried unsuccessfully to shut off the gas at the site. A National Grid worker was called in to shut off the gas at the street.
Sehgal said National Grid had posted a notice, saying the company had turned off the gas, on the front door roughly six months after the couple bought the house. National Grid workers visited the house multiple times before the demolition, he said.
A National Grid spokesperson told Brookline.News that it did not receive a request to cut the gas line until after the demolition had occurred.
Teesdale was told to erect fences around the perimeter, Bennett wrote.
Debris on the site of a home that was illegally demolished on Beverly Road. Photo by Charlie Johnson
Asbestos on the site
The demolition crew also failed to remove asbestos prior to the demolition, according to Bennett’s report.
Teesdale said he hired an asbestos contractor to inspect the site six months before the demolition. The contractor reported no asbestos in the pipes and reached the same conclusion when he returned to the site the week before the demolition.
Asbestos – which was widely used for insulation and fireproofing until it was discovered to be carcinogenic in the 1970s – was discovered on a pipe behind a wall after the demolition, Teesdale said.
People exposed to asbestos can develop lung cancer or other diseases years or decades later. The inspector required Teesdale and his crew to place warning signs around the property.
“I never saw that pipe,” Teesdale said. “He never saw that pipe.”
Teesdale said he realized after the demolition that the asbestos contractor had an expired license.
State and local consequences
State regulators have fined Teesdale $750 for handling asbestos without a license, according to a civil citation and civil penalty filed by the state’s Department of Labor Standards.
Bennett said he is waiting to hear from Brookline’s attorney before deciding how much to fine Teesdale. He could face fines of as much as $1,000 per day by the building department. The Zoning Board of Appeals can also impose fines of up to $300 per day for failing to have the proper permit.
Sehgal told Brookline.News he thought all the necessary inspections for asbestos, gas, water and electricity had been completed before the demolition.
Dietra Litt, who also lives across the street, said she was not bothered by the demolition.
“From my perspective, from across the street, the demolition seemed very efficient,” Litt said.
Litt was relieved to see the house torn down after sitting untouched for almost two years.
She said the owners deserve the benefit of the doubt for the problems that have arisen from the demolition.
“I can’t wait for them to be my neighbor,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. Whoever’s in charge, go figure out what happened and prevent it and fix it, and let’s move on.”
This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.