MONTAGUE — The Strathmore Mill Demolition Design Project is underway, with a deadline of June 14 for the design and bid-ready plans and specifications for the demolition of the building.
The Strathmore mill complex, on the island between the power canal and the Connecticut River, is owned by the town, which had to take ownership of it for back taxes several years ago when its owners essentially gave up on it. The factory has been mostly empty since then and a large section of the complex was destroyed by a suspicious fire several years ago. The town has had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to protect the building from vandals and intruders.
However, the Swift River Hydro Company, a privately owned business operating out of and with rights to part of Building 9, poses a problem for the town’s demolition plan.
Using $25,000 from the town and $115,000 of federal Community Development funds through a partnership with Franklin County Regional Housing and Redevelopment Authority, the town contracted Tighe and Bond engineers to design and prepare bid-ready plans, specifications and permitting documents for the demolition of the old paper mill, according to Town Planner Walter Ramsey.
“It isn’t as easy as having a wrecking ball go through it,” Ramsey said. “It’s an intricate process. The town is doing everything within its limited means to prepare the area for reuse.”
In the Selectboard meeting on Monday, Franklin County Regional Housing and Redevelopment Authority Infrastructure Coordinator Bruce Hunter came before the board to get $8,000 for a change of the demolition design project.
In October, Hunter said the authority met with Tighe and Bond to review the structural analysis of the Strathmore complex, and were promised a design change because of the structural conditions they found related to the Swift River Hydro Plant.
“It created a $50,000 design change to take down all the buildings as the Selectboard asked us to do,” Hunter said. “The original grant was only taking buildings north of the hydro plant. We asked them to go back and look at alternatives to bring it down to something we could afford. They found buildings 1 and 2 could not be taken down because of major structural issues related to the hydro plant.”
Specifically the back wall of Building 2 is the back wall of the hydro plant, so if Building 2 is razed, a new three-story structure would need to be built to support the hydro plant, according to Hunter. Building 1 is attached in such a way that it would also have an impact on the hydro plant, and buildings 1 and 2 are attached to one another in a way that if one building were taken down, the other would need to be taken down as well.
Hunter said the group decided to go back to the original concept of dealing with the buildings north of the Swift River Hydro building and bringing them down to the lowest level.
The selectboard unanimously approved the transfer of funds for the project.
Town Administrator Steve Ellis said the plans have to be precise in order to bid the project.
Meanwhile, the building is slowly deteriorating.
It was reported that a 100-foot-tall chimney has been losing bricks, and Building Inspector Chris Rice Monday reported inspectors said it is more likely to fall in on itself than to topple.
Late last year, the Selectboard unanimously approved an allocation of $3,000 to pay Boston Chimney and Tower to assess the chimney.
“I feel comfortable that it’s not in that bad shape, “Rice said. “We’ve had some pictures we were looking at, Walter had photos from about eight years ago and I lined them up [with more recent ones] and there’s very little change.”
“It’s not in imminent danger of just toppling over,” said Kuklewicz.
Rice said he was going to keep an eye on the situation, working with Turners Falls Fire Chief John Zellmann.