If new construction has its challenges, they don’t compare to monumentally botched reconstruction of older buildings. The epicenter of botched is the 1920s mixed-use building at Madison and Circle. There we have the compelling-like-a-train-wreck tale of Briolette Beads, a little store trying to make a modest livelihood and which keeps getting swamped, literally, by a failing building that hiccups and gushes water from inappropriate places.
We’ve been over this territory before. Blame aplenty. A developer way over his head. A village building department that must have been in a coma to allow this debacle. A bank that overextended in the boom and failed in the bust.
Left in the soggy remains are a bead shop and a handful of screwed-over condo owners. The perfect storm of incompetence, overreaching and awful timing.
