Adamo Demolition Clears 1.7-Million-Square-Foot GM Facility
June 27, 2023
This article was originally published in the March/April 2001 issue of DEMOLITION magazine.
Editor’s note: This article was written when the National Demolition Association (NDA) was the National Association of Demolition Contractors (NADC).
The former Peregrine (US) Inc. facility was located on Coldwater Road in Genesee Township, Michigan, on approximately 120 acres of land. The main manufacturing building was historically used for the manufacturing of automotive interior components and covered nearly 1.7 million square feet of manufacturing and office space.
General Motors Corporation (GM) recently resumed ownership of the facility through Remediation and Liability Management Co. Inc. (REALM), a wholly owned GM subsidiary, after Peregrine ceased operation in August of 1999. REALM then initiated environmental decommissioning and demolition activities along with a voluntary Resource and Recovery Act (RCRA) facility investigation (RFI) in cooperation with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
The company of choice to tackle this complex project was NADC-member Adamo Demolition & Environmental Specialty Co. of Detroit. Dan Stewart, site superintendent on the Coldwater job site and 10-year veteran for Adamo Demolition, says “the Coldwater plant was a perfect opportunity for Adamo to use its arsenal of LaBounty demolition equipment.”
“Everyone working on the site is a professional and knows exactly what is required of them to complete a project like this on time, on budget and safely. This project required both primary and secondary equipment to do the job right and LaBounty was our tool of choice,” says Stewart.
The project required Adamo to move over 250 tons of material per day just to keep pace. “You can’t do that with equipment that is not quality,” Stewart says.
Attacking the main structure of the building, Adamo’s equipment of choice were a pair of Caterpillar 345BL excavators outfitted and plumbed with LaBounty MSD70-III rotational demolition shears. These units brought down the frame and did the primary downsizing of the I-beams and supports. After the steel was separated and cut to handling size, a pair of LaBounty MSD30-III rotational shears mounted on a Caterpillar 320 and 312 machines prepped and reduced the material for transportation. For this job that meant cutting, sizing and loading over 11,000 tons of steel, all of which needed to be in acceptable size and condition to be sold to a nearby scrap yard for processing.
Handling the reinforced concrete on the job required a different type of processing equipment. The rebar separation and concrete reduction was handled by LaBounty concrete pulverizers, “CPs,” mounted on Caterpillar 375 and 235 excavators. The separation and job site movement of material was done by a pair of LaBounty heavy-duty contractors grapples, “HDR 140s,” on Caterpillar 330B-LC excavators.
“With the help of these specialized equipment, we moved between 60,000 and 70,000 cubic yards of concrete with high efficiency and produced a high-quality product, ready for reuse,” says Stewart.
The demolition of the entire facility was accomplished in a little over five and a half months, another success for Adamo Demolition.