Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - After more than seven months of tear down work in Buffalo's "Old First Ward", crews are nearing the end of demolition of the Great Northern grain elevator on Ganson Street.
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Wednesday saw the last large marine tower at the Southern end of the historic site being torn to the ground, marking the end of the major demolition process. From where things go from here, demolition crews will be loading the remaining debris from the site.
"They will be loading out the steel, there might be about four more trucks of steel. They take a magnet over the whole site and make sure there's no loose steel on the site. Then much of the brick has been pulverized, it was crumbling as they came down," said Cathy Amdur, Buffalo's Commissioner of Permits and Inspection. "It will take, at least, a few weeks to get all the brick out there. There's probably 300 loads of pulverized brick on site."
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Amdur expects about four loads of steel to be taken off the site with the final marine tower coming down. Meanwhile, she says there's around 300 loads of brick and brick debris on site to clear out. According to Amdur, a lot of the timeline for cleanup will have to do with the availability of trucks with construction season heating up.
Shortly after the demolition of the Great Northern began in September, Amdur had told WBEN the process was set to take around eight months to clear the entire site owned by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM). While the timing of demolition is just about on schedule, Amdur says the No. 1 priority in any situation such as this is the safety of everyone in-and-around the site.
"There was an engineer on site almost daily, our city inspectors were on site almost daily. We were in constant contact with the demolition contractor, and thankfully, everything happened safely," she said. "The building has been dismantled safely, and that's always our goal and our intention. To make sure the public is out of harm's way, and also the folks working on the site are safe."
Amdur says it is not typical that the city requires the owner of a site to have an engineer on-hand for a demolition so frequently, but that was a special measure they took to ensure the safety of everyone.
"We felt that because they're so close to the waterway, because they're so close to the railroad tracks, across the street you have a thriving entertainment district, if you go through that area on on a weekend or an evening, there's frequently a lot of tourists and residents in the area. We wanted to make sure that i's were dotted and t's were crossed, so that was definitely atypical and especial measure to require that ADM hire an engineer to oversee this dismantlement," Amdur said.
Once everything is cleared from the Great Northern site, city officials with the Department of Permits and Inspection will then have to look at the foundation.
"There are 6,000 hemlock piles that were driven into the ground, and on top of that, there's pile caps that have an assembly, including cast iron plates and then stone plates on top of those, and then there's a concrete slab poured over the top of that," Amdur explained.
"Our goal, our department's goal, the city's goal is to make sure whatever happens next, this site is left in the best condition possible for future development, whether that's ADM or someone else down the road. I have not heard anything about ADM not being on this site, I just try to think decades ahead. We asked ADM to hire an environmental engineering team to take a look at the site to make sure the waterway is being protected, the railway is being protected. It's probably not realistic to take out 6,000 hemlock piles, but the concrete slab should come off, the pile caps may need to come off. We need to think about the site going forward."
When asking ADM whether they have a future plan for the site, Amdur says they have not given the city an official plan for any future development.
As demolition wraps up at the Great Northern site, Tim Tielman - Director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo - can't help but feel vindicated for the structural integrity of the historic grain elevator before any crane began tearing it down.
"As we said before any demolition began, if demolition were to occur, our point that the building wouldn't fall down of its own has proven true from Day 1," said Tielman during an appearance on WBEN with Brian Mazurowski and Susan Rose. "That building, even as they were beginning demolition, withstood the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Buffalo history, withstood two epic winter storms, including 18 hours of 50 mile-an-hour plus winds, and nothing fell down.
"Again, it's just disappointment at the mayor's insistence that public safety was an issue, the judge's notion that hired gun engineers were correct that the whole building was in danger of imminent collapse, proved false."
Tielman says with the demolition of the Great Northern, the city has lost, perhaps, its most significant building to demolition since the Larkin Administration Building in 1950.
However, he feels there could be a valuable lesson learned from the demise of the Great Northern. That would be the importance of preservation for some of the other historic structures in Buffalo.
"Doing something like restoring the Broadway Armory could, again, demonstrate how important it is to keep some of our historic structures, and give them new uses and new life," Tielman said. "Literally, we're not building this type of building anymore. We have to always look very carefully and examine all alternatives to demolition.
"The Great Northern was a unique building in the nation. Because of a unscrupulous owner abetted by a very questionable decision by the Commissioner of Permits and Inspections, and then the immovable Mayor on this, added up to a demolition that didn't have to happen."
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