Quote:
RogerDetroit wrote:
Below is a link to a Detroit Free Press article that gives answers to the most frequently asked questions (FAQ) they get about the Packard Plant.http://www.freep.com/article/20121216/NEWS01/312160154/Banksy-piece-s-fate-answers-other-Packard-Plant-questions
One question is, "..What is the cost of demolition?"
And their response is:
"But $20 million for demolition and cleanup at the site sounds like a lot of money. Is that reasonable?
That's the city's estimate. A demolition expert told the Free Press that tearing down the plant could cost $10 million, with environmental clean-up adding as much as $10 million more. The 1998 implosion of the J.L. Hudson department store on Woodward cost $12.8 million.
Yes, the buildings are different, but that figure shows that relative cost of demolishing such a large structure. Hudson's had 25 stories and 2.2 million square feet, and was close to the People Mover, which was damaged when the store was imploded. The Packard is in a sparsely populated area, nearly half a mile long, and had, at one time, 3.5 million square feet. Its tallest building is seven stories."
My reference to Hudson was the Hudson automobile plant that was once over on South Conner.
Your reference here is the J.L. Hudson Department Store that was on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit. Not sure how that worked into the equation. Anyway, I knew both properties very, very, very well. My uncle in fact was a part owner of the J.L. Hudson building. But again, my reference was to the Hudson car plant, not J.L. Hudson's. Same name, same family... totally different buildings, different purposes, and different locations.
The Hudson car plant was built just like the Packard Plant... out of poured, reinforced concrete. And like I said... I watched month after month, year after year from my family's business which was in the area. I watched the demo companies as they tried and tried and tried to tear down the Hudson car plant. It was once rumored to have driven a demo company broke that was tearing it down. That alone scared folks in the demo biz back then. This was before the days of implosion-demo.
Again, for this reason, my dad's construction friend said IN the 1950s that HIS friends in the demo biz would not touch the Packard Plant for love nor money!
And as I have said before, I had free reign of the Packard Plant in the late 1960s/early 1970s (I still have my ID badge) and I can assure you, there were pits full of toxic soup even then... and dark areas with horrid smells I dared not even enter. And heaven knows what has been dumped there in the years since.
I know what it cost in the 1970s to clean up one relatively small buried dump in a beach town in Southern California. Cleaning up the site of the Packard Plant? Today? After demolition? With the EPA watching? Wow. You better hurry up and believe it will be welllllll into the millions!
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