Board paves way for grant to raze foundry

The Grafton Village Board on Monday approved a management policy needed to accept a $150,000 grant that will help pay to raze the Goldberg Foundry.

The grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. will help offset the estimated $600,000 cost to demolish the former foundry at 1019-1025 11th Ave., Community Development Director Gabe Gilbertson said.

The remainder of the funds will come from the village’s tax incremental financing district No. 6.

The former foundry is at the heart of the TIF district, a 34-acre area northwest of downtown that contains a number of blighted properties.

Gilbertson said that he and about 20 people from companies interested in bidding on the demolition of the foundry toured the site last week, something the village is requiring of bidders on the contract.

“We want to make sure people understand what the project entails,:” he said.

“There will be some remediation,” Gilbertson added, noting the building likely contains some asbestos and lead paint.

He said he expects that bids for the demolition will be due late this month, with the Community Development Authority and Village Board expected to award the contract in September.

Work, he said, could begin as early as late September.

“The demolition will take it down to a slab on grade,” Gilbertson said, a step necessary to cap the site and ensure the soil underneath isn’t disturbed.

The next phase of the project, he said, will be to investigate the potential for soil contamination at the site.

Gilbertson noted that a property across the street from the foundry is dealing with underground contamination.

“I believe there are fears the plume of contamination has gone across the railroad tracks,” he said. “With its industrial use, I’m sure there were likely underground tanks  or chemicals used that may have leached through the floors.”

It would be difficult to investigate potential contamination now, he said, because the former foundry building is rapidly deteriorating.

The stairs to the second floor of the building are in bad shape, the second floor of the office building has collapsed and portions of the roof of the warehouse have fallen in recently. There’s no power to the building and no lights inside.

“There’s a lot of cool stuff in there that would be cool to salvage but I don’t know how you would get it out of there,” he said. “The building is just in very poor shape.”

The former foundry, Gilbertson said, functioned as a single building but was an amalgam of structures and additions.

“It’s clear it was built in multiple stages,” he said.

But it apparently was abandoned quickly, he said, noting that in the office “It looks like someone just got up and left. There are still checks left on the desk.”

The building was abandoned about 2003, he said.

Gilbertson said the village’s goal is to ready the building for redevelopment in 2027.

“A lot will depend on what’s found underground,” he said. “That will dictate the next phase and the timetable.”

The village hasn’t determined exactly what sort of development it wants to see at the site, Gilbertson said.

“Ultimately, for the tax incremental district to be successful, there has to be some redevelopment there. What that looks like is hard to say,” he said. “With it being in a residential neighborhood, some sort of residential use makes sense. What that will be, we’ll have to see.”