Construction equipment in the parking lot of the vacant Georgetown Mall. Demolition is scheduled to begin this week.
Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com
The demolition, more than three years in the making, will proceed with the help of a $1 million grant from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
Washtenaw County Brownfield Redevelopment coordinator Nathan Voght said in a press release that activity at the site is scheduled to begin this week. After the buildings and parking lots are torn down, environmental remediation work will need to be completed to ensure that the property can be safely re-used. Voght said the entire process is scheduled to be completed by the end of July.
“Once we finish the demolition there’s soil remediation, site restoration, and grading it back to a relatively flat level,” he said in an interview Monday morning.
“That would wrap up the grant work that the county is involved in, and then the property would be solely the developer’s responsibility.”
The primary contractor for the demolition is Wayne-based Environmental Quality Company. The company has two contracts, one with the county for the grant-funded work, and the other with developer Craig Schubiner through holding company PSAA LLC to do clean-up work that the MEDQ deemed to be the responsibility of the site’s owner.
“We’ve been ready to go with our contract, but we have had to wait until the developer had his ducks in a row to begin the demolition,” Voght said.
“He’s responsible for the core contaminated area, about 880 tons of soil, and then the grant pays for anything beyond that up to 2,500 tons of soil.”
Washtenaw County first secured the $1 million grant in 2012 to assist with the demolition of the property.
The development of the space into a mixed-use project called Packard Square has been in the works since January 2011.
Schubiner originally intended to break ground on the project, which includes 230 apartments and 23,790 square-feet of retail space, in August 2011.
Original development plans started years earlier, prior to Kroger closing in 2009. Efforts for earlier redevelopment stalled during the economic downturn as the property faced tax foreclosure following bankruptcy of a lender.
This story will be updated.
Ben Freed covers business for AnnArbor.com. You can sign up here to receive Business Review updates every week. Reach out to Ben at 734-623-2528 or email him at benfreed@annarbor.com. Follow him on twitter @BFreedinA2