Landmark Sinclair smokestack could soon be thing of the past

The iconic smokestack that has towered over the Sinclair site for more than 100 years could disappear as soon as next week.

City code enforcement workers declared the 160-foot-tall brick smokestack an imminent threat as crews extinguished a fire last month at the former slaughterhouse, 1600 Third St. SE.

On Dec. 22, the City Council approved a plan that included demolishing the smokestack.

Dave Zinser, owner of D.W. Zinser Demolition of Walford, said if his firm receives the contract, the smokestack will be among the first pieces to go.

Bids for the demolition are due Friday, and Zinser crews could begin work immediately if the company is awarded the contract at next week's City Council meeting.

“It's dangerous to walk around it,” Zinser said. “If it falls ... it would kill somebody.”

Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, said the smokestack has 2- to 3-inch cracks and is noticeably leaning.

City Manager Jim Prosser has said stabilizing the smokestack would cost more than $1 million.

Maura Pilcher, chairwoman of the Cedar Rapids Historic Preservation Commission, said the group might discuss the smokestack at its meeting Thursday.

“We've always seen it as one of those iconic things in the cityscape,” she said.

Pilcher said she hoped engineers knowledgeable in historic work could examine the structure.

Brucemore, where Pilcher works, has a connection to the property in T.M. Sinclair, who opened the plant in 1871. After he died, in a fall down an elevator shaft at the plant, his widow had Brucemore built.

The smokestack was likely built around 1905, Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter said.

Forrest Mykleby, plant manager when the site was under Wilson Foods, said the smokestack was used to diffuse smoke above ground level.

Painted lettering with the Wilson name remains visible, but Stoffer Hunter noted the Sinclair name is also embedded in raised letters on the smokestack.

While smokestacks are preserved in some states to mark historic districts, few remain in Iowa, he said.

Candy Streed of Silos & Smokestacks, a 37-county National Heritage Area in northeast Iowa, said no smokestacks are among the group's visitor sites.

Technical support and other help is available for preserving such structures, but Streed said no one had approached her group about the Sinclair smokestack.

“My hope is that at least an opportunity is given to the community if they want to rally around it,” she said. “It has a special meaning to the city of Cedar Rapids.”