Tony Smith, of Tony Smith’s Wrecking, said crowds gathered as his crew toppled over the building’s legendary smoke stack last weekend.
“A lot of people showed up,” Smith said. “Done it early in the morning but we still had a lot of people down here.
While Smith’s crews are hard at work, there is no word on what is next for the massive plot of land that sits on the edge of downtown Springfield.
The Springfield News-Sun has reached out to the owners of the Crowell-Collier property, Mosier Industrial, multiple times but has not received a reply.
Demolition costs for the property will be paid completely by Mosier, it’s unclear how much it will cost to bulldoze the massive property.
More: ‘Our grandchildren will call us foolish’: Crowell-Collier buildings to be demolished
Mayor Warren Copeland said the city, “doesn’t have any idea what they are going to do,” with the property, as they also have been unable to get in contact with the owners.
“This is a problem the city has had for years dealing with these people. When they brought it, they had an expectation I think but there were some things that stood in the way. I think they didn’t want to put the money into it that needed to be put into it,” Copeland said.
Copeland said the city has gone, “back and forth,” with Mosier for years.
City, property owner at odds for years
Crowell-Collier — once the printing home of the world’s largest magazine publishing company — closed a publishing plant in 1956.
According to reporting by the Springfield News-Sun, the closure of the printing press was blamed on the rise of the television news industry.
“Television killed the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. in Springfield. Although it may not have been solely to blame, there is little doubt that TV was a major factor in the demise of the company,” reporter Jim Witters wrote in 1987.
The property was sold to Harry Denune in 1972 who then used it to house his Dixie Distributing Co. motorcycle parts business.
More: Demolition begins on Crowell-Collier site in downtown Springfield
The property caught fire in 1999 and again in 2011 before Denune sold it to Mosier in October 2011 for $1.5 million.
Since the fires, the buildings have sat vacant. That’s when the city’s long fight with the industrial company over safety concerns began, Copeland said, after bricks began falling off the building and onto the street.
The city filed a complaint against Mosier in July 2012 to set a timeline to clean out the property due to safety concerns.
After several missed deadlines, and refusal to repair falling bricks and other safety hazards, the city returned to court in March of 2014.
Clark County Common Pleas Judge Richard O’Neill then ordered that Mosier would have to pay $800 per day if they continued to miss the new extended deadlines.
In May of 2014, the city filed a contempt motion because of more missed deadlines, according to previous reporting by the Springfield New-Sun. Mosier was then found in contempt in July of 2014 and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine for violating the March order.
The court also ordered Mosier to remove all contents, asbestos, electrical circuits, plumbing fixtures and cut and cap all waste lines by Oct. 31, 2014.
PHOTOS: Final look at Crowell-Collier property
In lieu of making repairs to buildings, Mosier decided to begin demolishing them.
The once-900,000-square-foot structure occupied an entire city block, and was the largest in Springfield, before demolition of some of its buildings began in late 2014.
Over 400,000-square-feet of the buildings remain.
Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck said the city received a demolition permit request for all of the remaining Crowell-Collier buildings on July 11, it was approved on July 18.
“I understand people feeling sorry to see it come down,” Copeland said. “But the building, in the shape that it is, needed to come down, or it was going to fall and hurt someone.”
‘The loss of the building doesn’t erase that part of our history’
Kevin Rose, a historian at the Turner Foundation in Springfield, said the Crowell-Collier buildings are, “one of our two biggest stories in our history.”
“Certainly, the loss of the building doesn’t erase that part of our history. But, when you lose a landmark it leaves a void in the understanding of our past,” Rose said.
Rose said although the building is not contributing right now, demolishing the building means, “taking the capacity in the community for growth and diminishes it.”
“You can see this right now, the biggest issue holding us back is lack of buildings. We demolished so many buildings as a growth strategy. We just don’t have those buildings anymore,” Rose said.
Wrecking Co: Hazardous materials already removed from Crowell-Collier buildings
Thomas Taylor, U.S. Public History professor at Wittenberg University and President of the Ohio Academy of History, agrees with Rose to an extent.
He said properties like the Crowell-Collier are, “kind of a landmark.”
“When buildings like that become landmarks, it is always difficult when they sit empty or are not fully used. Yes it’s a landmark, but it can also be an eyesore. They are very difficult to take care of,” Taylor said.
Taylor said properties like Crowell-Collier remind people of the heritage of a city, and in Springfield’s case that history is manufacturing.
“For a long time, we had a lot of people living in Springfield for many decades that remember the heyday of (Crowell-Collier). The magazine, the office workers, the press workers, and they remember it fondly,” Taylor said. “But we are getting to a point where that generation is decreasing.”
The Crowell-Collier could have, at one point, been rehabbed and re-purposed, Taylor said.
“Which would have been great. If you can preserve it, then do it, of course. But cities like Springfield can only do a certain amount,” Taylor said. “But at some point, a building of that size and scale, at a certain point, become a hazard.”
There are lots of old buildings that Rose’s organization, the Turner Foundation, has rehabbed and returned to life, Taylor said, and there is a still a want for that within the community in some parts of Springfield.
Unfortunately, Crowell-Collier has simply become a loss, Taylor said.
“If people feel torn about the buildings coming down, then the preservation community has done its job,” Taylor said.
The Springfield News-Sun has followed the history of the Crowell-Collier property since it’s closure in 1956.
1956: Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. closes.
1972: The property is sold to Dixie Distributing Co., who uses the building for a motorcycle parts business.
1999: The property catches fire.
2011: The property catches fire again and the City of Springfield begins to become concerned about safety hazards in and around the property.
October 2011: The property is sold to Mosier Industrial for $1.5 million.
July 2012: The city of Springfield files a complaint against Mosier to clean out the property, due to safety concerns and falling bricks.
March 2014: After missing several deadlines to clean out the property, the city takes Mosier to court again.
May 2014: The city files a contempt motion because of more missed deadlines.
July 2014: Mosier is ordered to pay a $15,000 fine for violating order issued in March. The court also orders Mosier to remove all contents from the property, including, asbestos, electrical circuits, plumbing fixtures and cut and cap all waste lines by Oct. 2014.
October 2014: Instead of cleaning out the property, Mosier instead decides to begin demolition on some of the properties buildings.
July 2019: Mosier files a demolition permit request for all remaining buildings on the Crowell-Collier property. The city approves the requests.
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