Demolition could start on Sinclair smokestack next week

The Sinclair smokestack could disappear from the city's skyline as soon as next week.

A timeline and alternative preservation projects will be discussed Thursday and Friday.

Greg Eyerly, the city's flood recovery director, doubted demolition would start on the smokestack this week, but said, “we have to move quickly.”

D.W. Zinser, the Walford firm that is demolishing the former meatpacking plant, 1600 Third St. SE, also will handle the smokestack demolition.

Eyerly said a preliminary report from Oak Park Chimney Corp. of Forest Park, Ill., showed bricks missing from the 180-foot-tall structure and others “just hanging from the top, ready to fall.”

Those images, plus a new $2.74 million estimate to temporarily halt the plant's demolition, stabilize and restore the smokestack, prompted Cedar Rapids City Council members to vote unanimously Tuesday night to demolish the smokestack.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission voted in April to pursue saving the century-old structure, calling it an iconic part of the city's skyline and tribute to Wilson & Co., once one of the four largest meatpacking plants in the world.

Commission Chairwoman Maura Pilcher said the group will discuss alternative projects at its meeting Thursday.

The meeting, at 4:30 p.m. at Community Connections, 1501 First Ave. SE, is open to the public.

Eyerly will meet with commission members and others Friday to discuss the timeline and explore whether or not the 41-foot tall base of the smokestack might be saved.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency would have provided up to $200,000 to restore the smokestack. Because federal funds are being used for demolition and 12 of the packing plant's structures, including the smokestack, were eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, funding is provided to offset those cultural losses.

The commission will examine where else that funding might go.

Smokestack advocate Julie Wiedner of Cedar Rapids called the structure “another casualty of the flood.”

“It's sad to see another piece of history go,” she said.

Commission member Jon Thompson said he hoped the group could find another way to memorialize the plant.

That tribute won't likely involve reusing the smokestack's bricks.

Dave Diederich, of Gerard Chimney Co., in St. Louis, said radial bricks used for smokestacks differ from standard bricks. Mortar is keyed into hollows of the bricks, making them nearly impossible to separate.

Knocking down the smokestack would also destroy the bricks, said Diederich, whose company has worked on the Sinclair smokestack and 10,000 others across the country.

“There's not going to be any bricks,” he said. “There's going to be brick chips.”

The company often receives requests to salvage bricks from smokestacks, Diederich said, but in its 55-year history, “it's never been done.”