What once was the site of a bustling factory in west Kewanee is now designated as a “brownfield” — a piece of property that may be contaminated by dangerous chemicals.
That sounds like something that would make the property worthless. But, assuming the City Council approves the necessary permit Monday, the former Kewanee Boiler location will one day be covered with solar panels — one of few uses that can be made of a brownfield.
The Boiler property isn’t the first place in Kewanee to be called a brownfield. More than 30 years ago, the former Walworth property also received that designation.
It started with the discovery of dozens of barrels of chemicals being stored in one of the old Walworth buildings.
The foundry operations on the 17-acre site on East Third Street between Main Street and Grace Avenue had stopped in October of 1978. In the late 1980s, Gary McIntire — who then was the city’s code enforcement officer — found the barrels. Some of them were leaking what appeared to be chemicals.
This started a court battle in which the Illinois Attorney General’s staff got the go-ahead to launch a cleanup operation at the Walworth site.
A small army of people dressed in hazmat suits went through the property getting rid of anything they found that was toxic. The process, paid for by the state’s Superfund dollars, cost several hundred thousand dollars.
There was a happy ending to the story. City officials found a contractor who was willing to demolish most of the remaining Walworth foundry buildings. The demolition didn’t cost the city a cent; the contractor sold the bricks and steel from the demolished buildings.
That left a large swath of green space in the heart of Kewanee, which the folks at Black Hawk College saw as an opportunity. They first built the Community Education Center, then the Welding and Skilled Trades Center, on the site.
Other former factory buildings in Kewanee have been put to good use. The Boss company purchased the former Kewanee Machinery and Conveyor and Shalco properties on Burlington Avenue and is using them in its warehousing operations. The former Kewanee Manufacturing plant on Burlington (at least part of it) is now being used by WASP Critical Power Solutions.
One former industrial site, though, hasn’t had a happy ending. The former Boss Gloves factory just east of the Boiler site was torn down years ago, but the site remains covered with rubble from the demolition.
Manufacturing is still taking place in Kewanee, of course, at the Great Dane and MTM Trailers plants on Kentville Road, and at the Rhino Tool facility on West South Street.
But much of the “metal-bending” work that once employed thousands of Kewaneeans is gone. It’s good to see that at least some of the space those factories occupied is being used for purposes better suited to the world of the 21st Century.
