Crews to demolish Sinclair site

Demolition crews will flatten most of the former Sinclair slaughterhouse within 45 to 60 days with the Federal Emergency Management Agency paying much of the cost, Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, told the City Council Tuesday night.

Eyerly said the “emergency” demolition, approved by FEMA and state officials at a meeting in Des Moines on Monday and backed by council resolution last night, will include one item history buffs long had hoped would remain – the old plant's signature brick smokestack.

Eyerly said the smokestack has cracks in places two and three inches wide, was noticeably leaning even before the current fire at the site and is now considered an “imminent threat” to collapse along with most of the rest of the complex of 25-plus buildings.

Council member Brian Fagan asked about the smokestack, and City Manager Jim Prosser said the that the cost to stabilize that piece of the 30-acre complex would have cost more than $1 million even before the break out of a fire at the site last Tuesday. Now the smokestack could fall at any time on crews who will be demolishing other buildings around, Eyerly added.

Eyerly told the council that the Sinclair site is now a demolition site and not a fire site, though he noted the fire that started last Tuesday is not yet out. The council's vote last night also calls for security services at the site.

After the meeting, Eyerly said the city's early working estimate is that it could cost $10 million to take down and cart off debris from much of the heart of the old plant that has been burning or is adjacent to what is burning and shares a common roof. FEMA will pay these costs, he said.

The city also will submit demolition plans to FEMA for some other flood-damaged buildings on the site which are not considered an imminent threat of collapse, and Eyerly said FEMA will pay those costs, too.

The demolition of a few buildings at the front of the plant, which burned in a fire in July, will be paid by the $3.5 million private insurance settlement the city received in November, Eyerly noted. He added that five buildings on the periphery of the plant likely will remain standing for now because they are not structurally unsound.

Eyerly said FEMA eventually, too, will likely make a payment to the city for the city's loss of the use of the Sinclair buildings tied to the June 2008 flood. Part the former industrial property was used by several small businesses at the time the city purchased it three years ago, and the city had kept the businesses there while it contemplated demolition and redevelopment of the site.

The June 2008 flood, which inundated the property, and the fires in July 2009 and the one that started last week have now succeeded in making way for the demolition of the Sinclair buildings in what otherwise would have taken years and no small cost to the city to have accomplished.

Mayor Kay Halloran wondered where the Sinclair demolition debris will end up, and council member Tom Podzimek, who sits as chairman of the board of the local solid waste agency, said the debris will almost certainly go to one of the agency's landfills and likely the Site 1 landfill just downriver from downtown.