Los Alamos County Council Chair Randall Ryti

By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

The Hilltop House Hotel has become a landmark for all the wrong reasons. It has transformed into an unsightly building that poses a danger to public health and safety. Plus, it makes for an embarrassing first impression of the town.

The plan is that by March 30, the whole building will be demolished, and this infamous landmark will disappear.

With less than two weeks to go, the deadline is looming for the Hilltop House Hotel to be demolished and its owners are working to meet it.

The question is, will the owners, New Mexico Innovation Triangle, make it?

In an email Friday afternoon, John Rizzo of New Mexico Innovation Triangle reported that all the material from the hotel has been removed a week earlier than expected; as a result, the asbestos abatement will begin sooner than planned.

In his email, Rizzo touched on what will happen if March 30 comes and the building is still standing.

“We’ll be talking with the County about that soon,” he said. “We frankly wanted to get a sense of how fast the asbestos remediation went and how we were performing on the removal of the loose material. Those two pieces of data help predict how fast the building could actually come down, safely. For example, if one end of the building was free of toxic material, the demo could start on that end.”

“The County officials and Fire Marshall have been very clear and insistent about the deadline, but they also recognize that we have to do this correctly,” Rizzo added. “I don’t think there is any disagreement that a safe and rapid demolition in that order is what’s important. Particularly given the fact that the site has been a hazard nearly a decade before we purchased it.”

Community Development Director Paul Andrus

Los Alamos Community Development Director Paul Andrus mentioned that the County and Innovation Triangle are communicating about the project.

“We have been in constant communication with John’s (Rizzo) group, and they have kept us up to speed on their permit,” Andrus said. “They did receive a limited scope demo permit from the County, which is the first step … getting rid of the debris and material from the building and asbestos removal.”

However, Andrus pointed out the limited scope demo permit doesn’t include the actual demoing of the building.

Project scope documents are needed for the actual demolition and the County hasn’t received those documents from Innovation Triangle, he said, nor has the County received a request to extend the deadline for demolishing the building.
“They’ve been making incremental progress,” Andrus said; but there is still information needed before the full demolition permit can be issued.

Looking at the schedule for how long these types of things typically take, it appears likely that Innovation Triangle might not make the deadline, Andrus added. He emphasized that nothing has been discussed with the council and the County hasn’t received anything from Innovation Triangle to indicate that the deadline will not be met.

Andrus added that any request to extend the deadline would need to go before council and it is council’s decision on how to respond to this request.

County Council Chair Randall Ryti said he anticipates an update on the demolition process during the March 29 council meeting, the day before the deadline.

However, the deadline still stands and if it isn’t met then, “the County would have the ability to do the demolition itself and whatever the cost is would be the lien on the building,” Ryti said.

He explained that the County would issue a request for proposals to demo the hotel. Once the service is contracted, whatever the cost is would be the lien.

Rizzo touched on the process Innovation Triangle is taking to remove this building. He explained there are four steps involved in this process.

The first step, Rizzo said, was to make the site secure with fencing and razor wire to prevent people from entering the property and potentially causing injury to themselves. This was completed in February.

The second step, he said, is removing loose materials that have been in the building since it was closed. This includes mattresses, broken furniture, mini refrigerators and other materials. This step also is now completed. The materials were non-toxic and were taken to the Eco Station. This activity occurred on the west side of the building.

The next two steps require the application to the County for a demolition permit, which has been submitted, Rizzo said. There also are various inspections that need to be completed along the way, he added, such as after the asbestos removal and final completion.

“The third step is the most complicated and requires the most care,” Rizzo said.

The inspection of the building revealed that there was extensive use of asbestos in its construction.

“…there are generally two types of asbestos – the first does not disburse when it’s removed, and the second can disperse readily into the atmosphere if it’s not handled correctly,” he said. “Both types are present in the building. Thus, in this case, the actual demolition of the building cannot happen until the toxic asbestos is removed. If we simply demolished the building without removing the toxic material, then the asbestos particles would be released creating a health hazard, causing this material to be disposed of at a special site that is very expensive due to the hazard. It cannot be mixed with non-toxic substances, thus the need to remove loose materials in the second step … and complete the demolition in the fourth and final step … after removal of the asbestos. Portions of the building can be demolished but only if those areas are cleared of asbestos first – so it is possible to overlap the two steps. The removal of the asbestos will happen as rapidly as possible, but with the caveat that it cannot create a hazard for the workers removing it and it can’t create an environmental issue if it’s released and not disposed of properly. In short, it will happen as fast as it can, with safety and environmental concerns taking precedence over speed.”

Rizzo explained that the fourth step is relatively straightforward … demolishing the structure.

“The good news is that after 10 years, the building is coming down and it’s a matter of weeks to solving this problem that’s lingered for a decade,” he said.

So, what is the plan once the building is finally gone?

“After the building comes down, our plan has been to build an apartment building on this site to address the critical housing needs in the community,” Rizzo said. “The number of units, scale and architecture have been changing based on the ballooning costs of construction over the last year, the needs of the community, the challenges of labor and supply chains due to the pandemic, the relatively remote proximity of the site and the cost of financing the project. We would expect to have plans to submit to County officials ideally by the summer, as to what the final plans are.”

The Hilltop House has had longtime roots in Los Alamos. Andrus said it was built in 1975 as a motel.