Demolition begins on Crowell-Collier site in downtown Springfield

Demolition started Friday on part of the massive Crowell-Collier complex in downtown Springfield, part of a more than 15-year effort to make the aging building safer.

Three of the complexs 11 buildings will be torn down by owner Mosier Industrial Services as part a court order. Work began Friday on a building in the center of the structure called Building F, removing brick walls and windows.

The city has focused on Crowell-Collier because of the scale of the complex and several safety and maintenance concerns, including two fires, falling bricks, lack of maintenance for 60 years and a large amount of unknown materials that were jammed in it, City Law Director Jerry Strozdas said.

There are just aspects of this building that, all told, made it a significant threat to public safety, he said.

Mosier had been ordered to tear down Building F by Oct. 31 and Buildings J and K by the end of the year. The court order was revised last month to adjust those deadlines and remove a completion date. The company now is to proceed continuously until the demolition is done, Strozdas said, but may take some weather-related breaks.

It reversed the order of some of the demolition, Strozdas said, doing interior work such as removing pipes first and then switching to the exterior.

The city would have liked the demolition to have moved quicker, Strozdas said, but is pleased that its progressing.

Its been an ongoing process. At each of the steps along the process, the building became less and less of a threat to the public safety and that was our mission all along, he said.

Part-owner of the building Carl Carroll said Friday that crews only had one working elevator to remove all of the material.

Every time we would get it empty, we would find a new room that had more in it, Carroll said. It would be semi loads after semi loads It took Harry 27 elevators and 40 years to fill it up and we emptied it in 3 years.

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Demolition begins on Crowell-Collier site in downtown Springfield