“Now you see something physically happening. We’ve been talking about it for years,” said Vince DeJoy, Dunkirk’s planning and development director.

The $35 million project will add 78 apartments to two sites, one at 208-14 Washington Ave. and the other on Fourth Street near the Save-a-Lot Plaza. The current demolition is of the Flickinger Building, and another old structure, on the site of the planned Washington Avenue apartment building.

“They started it and approached it from the Park Avenue side of the building.” DeJoy said. The intent was to keep debris away from Washington Avenue, he said.

“The roof had caved in — it was a dangerous situation. Now (demolition is) coming in the nick of time,” DeJoy said of the Flickinger Building.

OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Workers with Empire Building Diagnostics adjust a fence at the site of two buildings the company is demolishing on Washington Avenue. An apartment building is slated for the site.

After that is torn down, workers will have to do environmental remediation before construction of the apartments can begin, he said. There are enough contaminants on the site that project developer Regan Development successfully applied for credits from a brownfield program.

DeJoy continued that demolition permits are approved for vacant stores on the west end of the Save-a-Lot Plaza lot, near that site’s planned apartments. “That demolition should commence very soon,” he said.

DeJoy said Thursday that “Start up on construction on both sites should begin by May 1,” as per a conversation he had that day with a Regan Development official.

Empire Building Diagnostics is handling the demolition work on both of the project sites.

DeJoy added that Regan Development recently completed acquisition of the section of the plaza property where the apartment building is going. The building is set to get erected in a parking lot, currently all but unused, near the site of the storefronts that will be demolished.

According to a press release from the city, 16 of the apartments “will be set aside for permanent supportive housing affordable at or below 30% Average Median Income (AMI). They are intended for military veterans. Non-profit organization Soldier On is involved in this part of the project.

The rest of the apartments will be for tenants making between 30% and 70% AMI, along with a unit for the superintendent of Homesteads at Dunkirk Landing.

The project is part of Dunkirk’s state-funded Downtown Revitalization Initiative. DeJoy said it received $500,000 as an initial award and an additional $500,000 in a subsequent reallocation.

DeJoy said Regan Development intends to close on its construction financing this week.

“Regan took a risk by starting before everything was 100% in place,” DeJoy said. He claimed that “Everyone, including lenders, is confident the (funding) infrastructure will be in place.”