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Longtime Park Slope Eyesore Finally Scheduled for Renovation

By Leslie Albrecht | February 26, 2016 3:40pm | Updated on February 29, 2016 8:34am
 The boarded-up house at 497 Third St. has been an eyesore for decades. Now plans are in the works to renovate it, according to permits filed with the Department of Buildings.
The boarded-up house at 497 Third St. has been an eyesore for decades. Now plans are in the works to renovate it, according to permits filed with the Department of Buildings.
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DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht

PARK SLOPE — A longtime neighborhood eyesore could finally be getting a makeover.

Plans are in the works to renovate 497 Third St., a boarded-up wreck of a building that's been a local fixture for at least three decades.

Owner Peggy Hernandez filed permits Wednesday for a $592,620 renovation that would add two floors to the four-story structure. The plans call for a store on the first floor and apartments on the second, third and fourth floors. The fifth and sixth floors would be a duplex apartment, according to Department of Buildings filings.

Hernandez did not respond immediately to a phone call and email seeking comment Friday.

The dilapidated building has racked up more than a dozen DOB violations over the past decade, and neighbors have complained about it since the early 1990s, according to DOB records.

Locals have called the city nearly 40 times about problems at the run-down property, warning of raccoons living there and pieces of wood falling off the building, records show.

The decaying structure has been called a "mystery building" by some and a "ghost house" by others. It's a block away from another prominent Park Slope eyesore — the building on Seventh Avenue and Second Street that's in the process of becoming high-end condos.

"Over the years, it's deteriorated," said block resident Patrick Backstrom, who said he remembered seeing 497 Third St. in a rundown condition at least 30 years ago.

"I'm so used to looking at it, it's almost like I don't see it anymore," Backstrom said.