Demolition begins at Facemate property
Date: 4/11/2012
April 11, 2012By G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.comCHICOPEE — With a seemingly gentle push, the tower of one of the buildings at the Facemate site came down in a torrent of loose brick last week, marking the beginning of a new use for the property.
The symbolic demolition was done as part of a press event on April 5 to announce the start of a $1.6 million demolition project to clear the site.
The area on the banks of the Chicopee River, which had been used for manufacturing since 1829 will now, in part, be the location for the new Older Adult Community Center — the name for the new Senior Center — as well as other redevelopment.
The demolition of the Facemate property, along with the work that has been done so far to clear the adjacent Uniroyal complex represents efforts that have been "years in the making," Mayor Michael Bissonnette said to the local and state officials gathered for the event.
He added the sites "continue to be an enormous challenge to unlock the that largest legal and environmental quagmire in the city's history."
The sites will go from being "brownfields to bright fields," Bissonnette said.
The mayor noted the bricks, timber and steel from the buildings will be carefully collected and recycled, a move that has lowered the cost of the demolition.
Bissonnette joked that the bricks will be sold as part of the fund-raising effort for "$5 each or three for $20."
Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Gregory Bialecki said that projects such as the redevelopment of the Facemate and Uniroyal sites are examples of the state's strategy to transform such properties from "anchors to assets."
He said the Patrick/Murray Administration has made projects in "older industrial cities" a priority.
Bialecki also acknowledged that today in a time of "tight budgets" a combination of federal, state and local funding must finance such work.
Although the exact site for the new senior center has yet to be determined, it will be on the Facemate property, former Mayor Richard Kos, who is co-chairing the fund drive for the center said to
Reminder Publications.
McConnell Enterprises of Essex has already begun the asbestos abatement work and the demolition is expected to be completed by July.
When the demolition is complete, the city is expected to solicit private development proposals for the rest of the property.
City Historian Stephen Jendrysik was one of the people watching the demolition and carried an artifact from Chicopee's manufacturing past with him to the event. He explained it was a salesman sample book for Chicopee Manufacturing, the company that once made its home on the site.
He said the building that had been demolished was the research and development department for the company that wove gauze and cheesecloth for various applications. He said in 1915 Johnson & Johnson had bought the company, which produced the gauze for its various first aid products.
Jendrysik noted that at its height in the early 1930s, about 1,000 people worked at the company. Despite the Great Depression, the company was "booming," he added. It was also one of the first unionized operations of its type in the country.
The site itself was the second or third textile manufacturing location in the United States, Jendrysik said.
