Work to transform the long-dilapidated Clovelea Mansion in the Village of Saugerties into a mental health practice resumed this week after a years-old stop work order issued by the New York State Department of Labor was lifted.
Nina Schmidbaur, a licensed psychotherapist and lifelong Saugerties resident who owns Clovelea, confirmed that crews have been working the last three days to remove a pile of debris so work can begin again. Schmidbaur said the building has been entirely cleared of asbestos which sparked the stop-work-order that was issued in 2016 to Jason Moskowitz of New York City, who planned to build a boutique hotel on the site. That plan never came to fruition and he later sold it to Long-Islander T.J. Anand of Baran Hospitality Group for $130,000. Again, nothing happened. Schmidbaur purchased it in May for the same price, $130,000, according to Zillow.
Now with the order lifted, she plans to apply for a building permit with the Village of Saugerties so renovation work can begin as soon as possible.
Schmidbaur estimates the stop work order has cost her $30,000.
“It’s pretty tremendous. I’m paying taxes and a mortgage without even being able to maintain the aesthetic of the building, which is not pleasant to our community,” she said.
And she admitted it won’t be easy finding contractors as the ones she had lined up previously had to find other work because the stop-work order dragged on. “The removal itself is quite costly,” she said. “A lot of money gets funneled to the Department of Labor; there are fees at every stage that are a few hundred or thousand dollars.”
She said she faced additional hurdles like having the asbestos testing done three times.”They took over 20 samples and each time that continues to cost money.”
She admitted this has all been “quite a surprise” and when she purchased Clovelea, she was not aware this would be a cost. Clovelea last housed the Dragon Inn, a popular Chinese restaurant, which burned in the 1990s, gutting the historic mansion.
But still she says she is overjoyed at this stage and remains committed to seeing the project through. “It’s just great to feel the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Schmidbaur hopes to open her office in six months to a year for her practice Collective Resilience, which presently offers services online only.
Right now she’s hoping to have construction crews focus on sealing up the building for the winter with hopes of running enough plumbing and electricity to allow work to continue throughout the winter.
Clovelea would house between 10-13 therapists, placing a special emphasis on serving the BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities, even offering a special sliding scale payment system to those communities, both of whom she said have been marginalized by the mental health system.
She said people in these communities have all too often had to resort to finding care in a basement office with clinicians who rotate in and out of these jobs every six months to a year. “That’s not recommended,” she said. “When you have a private practice, you can have consistency and quality of care. Both of these populations have different histories of trauma within the medical system,” she said.
And that’s why as she prepares to open Clovelea, she wants to have a roster of therapists who look and identify like the patients she serves. “Representation is key in this healing capacity,” she said. “A person may often want to choose a provider that is representative of their own identity.”
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