Tuxedo Heights fire reignites dispute over road and bridge repairs
A 2:47 a.m. fire that displaced eight families has pushed Old Mill Road back to the center of a fight over who must pay for a $500,000 repair.
A pre-dawn fire at Tuxedo Heights has turned a road-and-bridge dispute into an urgent public-safety question for the 98-unit complex in Tuxedo. The blaze started around 2:47 a.m. on Monday, June 16, 2026, left one condominium building condemned, destroyed eight units and displaced eight families.
Old Mill Road, the complex’s most direct secondary access point, has been closed since part of a culvert and retaining wall collapsed into a nearby stream after severe winter weather earlier this year. During the fire, emergency vehicles had to enter from another access point and make a sharp 180-degree turn to reach the burning building, a route association leaders say is too slow and awkward for heart attacks, strokes and fires.
The Tuxedo Heights Condominium Association says repairing the damaged bridge and road would cost more than $500,000, a price the community cannot absorb after losing eight units in the fire. Association leaders say a decades-old easement puts the Palisades Interstate Park Commission on the hook for the repairs.
The commission disagrees. In its statement, the agency said the easement holder must maintain the road, bridge and surrounding area until the roadway is formally dedicated as a public road, and it says that formal dedication never happened. The commission’s mission is to preserve natural, historic and cultural resources for public use, which has left this stretch of property in a long-running overlap between state park land and a private residential community.
State Sen. James Skoufis’ office said it has been working with the association, the commission and the Town of Tuxedo since May to sort out responsibility and find a solution. For now, though, the central questions remain unresolved: who must pay for the fix, why the repair has stalled despite the scale of the damage, and what reliable access will exist before the next emergency reaches Parkview Drive.
The fire made the stakes visible in minutes. What had looked like a maintenance dispute over Old Mill Road now stands as a test of whether Tuxedo Heights can count on a safe route in and out when the next ambulance, fire truck or evacuation order comes.
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