“We did get a demolition permit around July 11, that permit was approved on July 18 for the demolishing of the remaining buildings,” Heck said.
PAST COVERAGE: More buildings to be razed at Crowell-Collier
PAST COVERAGE: Demolition begins on Crowell-Collier site in downtown Springfield
Heck said Smith’s will not be using explosives to take the building, and will instead be using, “traditional trackhoe equipment.”
“They would expect sometime next week full-blown demolition,” Heck said.
Springfield News-Sun has reached out to the buildings owner, Moiser Industrial, and Smith’s Wrecking about what’s next for the Crowell-Collier property but has not yet heard back.
Crowell-Collier — which was once the printing home of the world’s largest magazine publishing company — closed as a publishing plant in 1956, then was sold to Harry Denune in 1972. He used it to house his Dixie Distributing Co. motorcycle parts business.
The property caught fire in 1999 and again in 2011 before Denune sold it to Mosier in October 2011 for $1.5 million.
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The city filed a complaint against Mosier in July 2012 to set a timeline to clean out the property due to safety concerns.
The 900,000-square-foot structure occupied an entire city block and was the largest in Springfield before demolition of some of its building began in 2014.
The structure currently has about 400,000-square-feet left to be torn down.
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