Demolition of the Swift & Co. meatpacking building in the Cleveland Stockyards neighborhood has begun, a report by Cleveland Scene says. The $3 million project is under the management of B&B Wrecking and Excavating, Cleveland.
Funding for the demolition is coming from Mayor Frank Jackson’s Safe Routes to Schools program that is designed to encourage students to ride their bikes or walk to school through improving sidewalks and roads. The report says Constellation Schools’ Stockyard Community elementary, Max Hayes high school and Menlo Park Academy are within walking distance of the site.
Keisha Gonzalez of the Metro West Community Development Organization, says in the report that falling bricks from the building have posed hazards for students walking to the schools. The officials and community development organizations have been trying to get the structure demolished for eight years.
Ayonna Blue Donald, the city’s interim Building and Housing director, says in the report that the first phase of demolition will cost around $600,000 and will remove the front portion of the complex. A representative of B&B Wrecking says in the report that much of the project’s costs had been spent on abatement of asbestos and other hazardous materials. The demolition is estimated to cost less than $1 million.
A high-reach demolition machine is being used to tear down the building, the report says, because it is more precise than a wrecking ball or implosion and doesn’t pose a risk of flinging bricks and concrete onto nearby properties or the road.
The Stockyards neighborhood once was the heart of Cleveland’s slaughterhouse and meatpacking industries but has since moved onto scrap metal. The Swift & Co. facility opened in the 1890s and has been shuttered since 1961. Gonzalez says in the report the presence of the old buildings was hindering redevelopment.
Plans for the space after demolition are not known, the report says.