Dismantling Nears for Lynchburg Industrial Site

The City of Lynchburg, Va., held a public meeting in mid-August to update residents on the status of an approaching demolition project.

The city acquired the abandoned industrial site in 2002 and has been planning to convert the property, deemed an industrial brownfield by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), into a public park. The first phase of demolition was slated to start in late August of 2010.

Since the 1990s, the City of Lynchburg has been working with the EPA and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on how to proceed through the brownfields process.

As part of that effort, EPA Region 3 conducted a review and compiled a document titled “Deconstruction and Building Material Reuse to Foster Community Development in Lynchburg.”

Excerpts from that report include the following findings and recommendations:

• Two primary facilities stand on the abandoned site: Allen-Morrison (87,800 square feet) and Thornhill (86,400 square feet). Starting in the early 1900s, the 16.9-acre site was home first to the Thornhill Wagon Co. and later to Allen-Morrison Corp., which produced metal signs.
• Environmental assessments of the site revealed soil contaminated with metals and semi-volatile organic compounds.
• The condition of building materials within the buildings rendered the materials generally unsuitable for reuse.
• Demolition with mechanical separation and salvage of recyclable materials (particularly scrap metal, brick, and concrete) was recommended.
• In addition to finding that there were more than 200 tons of metal on the site, fixtures were identified that could be salvaged to maintain the site’s architectural heritage. It may be possible to leave a portion or entire wall of the Thornhill buildings intact as a backdrop for an outdoor theater or other aspect of the redevelopment.