Final remnants of old Bangor YMCA building are being removed

Debris should be fully cleared from the site of the old Bangor YMCA building by Tuesday night, five months after demolition started.

The remaining boulders were being removed from the site at the corner of Hammond and Court streets Tuesday morning, Penobscot County Commissioners said during a meeting that same day.

Demolition of the old YMCA started March 4. The remaining piles of brick, cinder blocks, metal scraps, and rebar were expected to be cleared by the end of May.

“The original plan was to be done already,” County Administrator Scott Adkins said Monday. The storms in the last couple weeks, as well acceptance of debris at landfills, slowed the process.

It’s the last bit of debris marking where an historic but deteriorating building once stood. The former YMCA was built in 1891 and over the years was home to a variety of businesses including a church, proposed dental school and martial arts studio after the YMCA consolidated into one building in 2008. In recent years, it was the site of a controversial proposal to renovate the building into a new jail .

A chain link fencing around the demolition will be removed in the next couple days and the cover seed will be planted to prevent dirt washing out, Facilities Director Brian MacDonald said at the meeting.

Commissioners did not discuss next steps for the property at the meeting. They’ve previously said there’s no specific plan for the site.

The county will likely entertain offers from anyone interested in the site, Commission Chairman Andre Cushing told the Bangor Daily News Monday. He said he hadn’t discussed it with the other two commissioners but that’s the plan that makes sense.

County commissioners decided to demolish the building in 2023. The original request from the county was for the demolition to be completed by Dec. 31. The county wanted to renovate the building so it could become the new jail; however, the cost estimates and space available meant that wasn’t feasible.

The county bought the more than 50,000-square-foot building for $825,000 in 2017 , a day after the city of Bangor condemned the building . The property was sold by the estate of William Buxton, who died in 2016. He had bought the building in 2013 for a denturist school, but abandoned those plans.

Weeks of asbestos abatement started in November and as the abatement team got deeper into the building, it discovered “surprise” asbestos, Adkins said previously.

With abatement taking longer than expected, the demolition was then delayed. It was further complicated by issues the contractor, Alloy Group, encountered in the two months since the first wall was taken down. One excavator broke down multiple times, while finding dump trucks to haul the debris was difficult, Adkins said previously.

In early April, a middle section of the brick building came down “unplanned” and collapsed onto Court Street. Red dust was visible on the street in the days after the collapse.

An April 4 snowstorm also delayed the work, MacDonald said previously.