The walls came tumbling down at City Centre for silo replacement project

Walls came tumbling down, finally, on Monday as workers began to overhaul the silo entrances at Batavia City Centre.

Work has been planned for several months, and equipment and crews arrived at the downtown site to begin the demolition process.

"Based on the timeline we received from the architect and project manager, we are looking at a 60 to 90 day timeline from today for completion," Assistant City Manager Erik Fix said Monday afternoon.  "The demo today was a welcome site as you can imagine.  We started with the Sunny’s entrance and will proceed with demolition to the three other Silo’d entrances estimated a 10 to 12 day demolition timeline for all four entrances.

"Once demo is complete they will work on concrete work/foundations and then structured steel (estimated time is another 24 days). That will be followed up with framing, roofing, and installation of the glass and other materials for the storefront entrances."

That work is scheduled to take four to five weeks. Masonry, brick and interior finishes will follow all of that, and take about two to three additional weeks, Fix said.

"Site work will wrap it up and we hope to be done by mid-August to early September. The plan is to keep contractors on and work on all four sites at one time," he said. "So rather than start one entrance, finish it and work on the next, we save time and money by doing each phase on all four pieces at the same time. Of course this is all tentative and dependent on materials and manpower, but that is the plan going forward."

Downtown Revitalization Initiative funding of about $1 million has been set aside for the silo project, with $120,000 for the design process and the remaining money for actually redesigning the silos.

Photos by Howard Owens