Demolition of the Former Chrysler Stamping Plant

Independence Excavating’s demolition division has begun wrecking the high bay of the former Chrysler Stamping Plant in Twinsburg, Ohio. Approximately 1,000,000 SF of the low bay was demolished last fall. The remaining work includes the high bay, boiler house, Baler building and a few other miscellaneous outbuildings ‐ all totaling over 800,000 SF. Even though we are over the halfway point in terms of square feet demolished, we are really just getting in to the bulk of the work since the remaining structures are of a significantly heavier construction.

One unique aspect of the high bay work is the roughly 350,000 SF basement in the area of the previously removed stamping presses. Due to the stamping processes from when the plant was operational for Chrysler, the entire basement had to be cleaned of all oils and built‐up accumulation prior to the start of demolition. EnviroServe was integral in getting this work done efficiently and on time to keep our demolition efforts on schedule. Concrete and pecan floor removal for the areas around the press pits is now mostly complete, along with demolition and removal of much of the extremely heavy support steel. This work needed to be completed in advance so we could safely and efficiently demolish the main high bay structure above it.

This project includes an estimated 25,000‐30,000 GT of scrap overall, putting it squarely in the ranks of one of our large‐scale demolition projects. With such a large job, we have been fortunate to work with an excellent team of contractors at the site to help get the job done right. Wall Street Recycling has been heavily involved in assisting with the sale of the various types of scrap from the facility, and Kurtz Brothers has again been the destination of choice for the huge amounts of construction demolition & debris (C&DD). As part of our overall effort to maximize our revenues, we were also able to make several large electrical equipment salvage sales and team up with Yoder Machinery for the first time to successfully complete the salvage sale of five large overhead cranes and several thousand linear feet of crane runway beam and rail.

Environmental concerns are much less when compared to similar scale, ongoing projects like the Ford Cleveland Casting Plant. However, there is always some work to be done prior to demolition in a plant this size. Our sister company, Precision Environmental, has already completed the asbestos‐containing materials (ACM) abatement in the high bay, and they are currently completing ACM abatement for the boiler house on the property. In addition, J&J Contracting performed the removal of the bulbs and ballasts in the high bay, and EnviroServe has been handling the residual wastes and oils that we encountered and the basement cleaning.

Now that demolition work has been started on the high bay portion, we have an extremely aggressive schedule to get the bulk of the work completed by the end of April. Final clean‐up work is then expected to be completed in June 2012.

Aerial photo taken by Focal Plane Photogrpahy, LLC.