Cranston Print Works demolition underway

WEBSTER - The sample building at Cranston Print Works is the first to be taken down, and its disassembly is being done as carefully today as its construction was nearly a century ago.

A giant demolition excavator last week began the months-long process of tearing down all the buildings and separating the salvageable materials for recycling.

The demolition on the nine-acre site will make way for a shopping center with a 60,000 square foot anchor store and several retail shops totaling 14,000 square feet.

The old buildings will be gone, but a lot of the memories will remain. Most everyone in the town worked at Cranston Print Works or knows someone who did.

Built in 1914, the sample building was used to store and display samples of the printed fabric for the salesmen to sell. To take it down, workers first hose each section of the building with water to keep the dust down. Then the excavator lifts out each cross beam, post, and floor board separately and sets it down.

All the salvageable and recyclable materials are neatly stacked at the site, the bricks, cross beams, floor boards, and scrap metal. Much of the material is valuable, especially the wood. The crossbeams and sub-floors, for example, are made of Southern white pine, which isn’t grown much anymore, according to the site supervisor. It will be salvaged and sold, he said. The bricks will be crushed and used for fill elsewhere on the site.

Michael O’Brien, principle partner in Galaxy Development LLC, said that he anticipates the demolition will take three to four months. The good weather has helped, he said, looking at a bright blue sky and bare ground. “It would take much longer to do this with ice and snow everywhere.”

Mr. O’Brien plans to start site preparation in May, and hopes to have the first stores open in the spring of 2013. He can’t divulge yet who the anchor tenant will be.

The demolition company doing the work is Patriots Environmental Corp. of Worcester.

Demolition of the Cranston Print Works buildings at the intersection of
Gore Road (Rt. 16) and Worcester Road (Rt. 12) began last week,
making way for a shopping center. Patriot staff photos.

Blake and Jack O’Brien pose with a giant stack of scrap metal during
the demolition of Cranston Print Works.

The historic clock tower seen in the back will be moved to the corner
of the site and landscaped to make an attractive focal point
at the intersection.