The Vermilion County Board’s Tuesday (Jan 14th) evening approval of an $880,000 budget amendment has now cleared the way for the City of Danville’s deal with Homrich out of out of Carleton, Michigan to move forward. The city will be paying for the tear down of Bresee Tower, and the county for the tear down of the old Vermilion County Courthouse Annex Building.
Danville’s Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr said he and his team from Public Works, Engineering, and Community Development spoke Wednesday, and that was to be followed by communication with city consultant the Farnsworth Group and with Homrich. Mayor Williams says by around Labor Day he’s hoping to see the buildings all gone. But partial tear downs visible to the naked eye will not happen right away. For one thing, asbestos remediation has to be taken care of.
AUDIO: I want to remind people, you’re not going to see the building coming down right away. First, they have to get all of the hazardous material out of there before they can actually start the demolition. Therefore, we don’t anticipate the actual demolition to begin until, probably sometime in early May I would guess. Late April, early May at the earliest.
With the two buildings being adjacent, Mayor Williams says he has an idea on how Homrich will approach it. But that’s left up to the experts.
AUDIO: I thought that the plan may have been to tear down the Annex first. That way, they are then able to get in closer to the Bresee Tower building when they’re actually doing the demolition. But I don’t know if that’s still the case.
Mayor Williams says 20 years ago this month is how long Bresee Tower has sat unoccupied.
