TURNERS FALLS — The crumbling smokestack of the former Strathmore mill is expected to be totally gone by the end of December, capping off a nine-month cleanup of the old building that the town hopes will improve the prospects of not just the Strathmore, but of the larger Canal District.
Activity in the Canal District picked up in 2019, with a state grant to replace the failed Fifth Street pedestrian bridge, and a new developer, Tom Cusano, purchasing the old Southworth mill building.
Now, according to Montague Town Planner Walter Ramsey, there may also be potential to expand access to utilities in the area, which would greatly improve prospects for business development.
“Slowly but steadily the pieces are falling into place,” Ramsey said. “It just takes a lot of time and careful attention from the town.”
Yet a final plan for the Strathmore is still unknown. The town has owned the building since 2010, when it took ownership for back taxes. In April, it started a cleanup worth $450,000 — $250,000 of which was paid by a grant from MassDevelopment, and the rest paid by the town.
At the time, Ramsey and Town Administrator Steve Ellis said the town was only improving the building in hopes of attracting a developer, and did not have a specific vision for how it might be reused.
The smokestack had been found to be unstable, and had to be removed for safety reasons. But it was only the most visible part of the project. The bulk of the work was a hazardous material abatement earlier this year.
Removing the smokestack was less straightforward. The project was complicated by technical problems, and dragged on for months longer than originally planned.
Starting in mid-August, heavy equipment couldn’t be brought to the site because of weight restrictions on surrounding roads. Instead, drones were used to remove pieces from the top of the structure.
“It was a slow process,” Ellis observed.
Later, workers would climb a ladder up the smokestack to take it apart by hand. Again, progress was slow. Workers had to be careful on the smokestack, which was unstable even before the demolition started, and the work had to pause for heavy wind or rain, Ramsey said.
“The real challenge has been finding laborers in the area who are willing to climb a 100-foot ladder,” he said.
The work was originally expected to finish by early September, but the contract was extended this week to the end of December. The smokestack is now largely gone, and work seems to be moving faster as it gets closer to the bottom, Ramsey said.
The budget for the project has not changed, he added.
Ramsey believes activity in the larger Canal District is still moving in a positive direction. Earlier this fall, the town moved to take ownership of the former Railroad Salvage building, which had languished for years before being ruined in a fire in 2016. Ramsey said utility access could be expanded in the area, depending on ongoing executive session negotiations with the FirstLight power company.
Reach Max Marcus at
mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.