The graffiti-covered concrete towers soaring over the Stevenson Expressway aren’t just local landmarks to Kate Eakin.
She sees the defunct grain storage structures known as the Damen Silos as monuments to Chicago’s and particularly the Southwest Side’s history as a center of industrial agriculture.
The silos represent “how this neighborhood came to be,” said Eakin, president of the McKinley Park Development Council.
Now the century-old silos in the 2900 block of Damen Avenue that were featured in the blockbuster 2014 film “Transformers: Age of Extinction” are likely to be leveled following their November 2022 sale to MAT Limited Partnership. The company has submitted five applications to the city to demolish the structures on the 23.4 acre site.
The sale and probable demolition have sparked resident fears about how the work and eventual construction on the site could affect their health. It’s the latest installment in a yearslong discussion about environmental justice around the South and West sides, which bear a disproportionate brunt of the city’s industrial activity.
According to a report from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Southwest Side, which includes McKinley Park, is home to the most asphalt plants and rail yard support facilities, making it the most overburdened area of the city.
More locally, the dialogue about whether and how to demolish the silos marks another skirmish in McKinley Park activists’ fight against MAT.
Despite officials’ assurances that the city would oversee the work with an eye toward protecting public health, commenters said they don’t trust the company or one of its owners, Michael Tadin Jr., to do right by the area residents. Environmental activists have held the asphalt plant in poor regard since it opened in 2018.
Although the neighborhood’s newly-seated alderman has said she’ll push to preserve at least some of the site, air quality and community information about pollution from probable demolition were top of mind for many public commenters at a community meeting Tuesday.
Edith Tovar , a Little Village resident and organizer with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization , came to the meeting to hear how the site owners and the city would engage with residents as the future of the site comes into focus. She said Southwest Side residents are “tired of not only being a sacrifice zone, but a dumping area” for industrial refuse.
The stakes of what happens to the Damen Silos are even higher, she said, because of recent memories of a bungled 2020 smokestack implosion in nearby Little Village that blanketed the neighborhood in dust.
“Given the whole catastrophe that was the Hilco demolition, I would hope that the city learned their lesson about informing residents,” she said.
Other public commenters referenced the same incident during the meeting and asked city officials how they’d avoid a similar public health risk.
“This is not Hilco,” Building Commissioner Matthew Beaudet said. “The silos are being brought down using mechanical equipment. Explosives are not being used.”
Heneghan Wrecking Co. will do the demolition work if the city approves the permit applications.
Heneghan Wrecking representative Kurt Berger echoed the point that the silos would be taken apart rather than imploded or crushed. He also walked through a number of other precautions, including air quality readings taken every 10 minutes, traffic control plans and keeping the structures and debris wet to limit dust.
McKinley Park resident Erica Montenegro, 37, asked the presenters Tuesday about how neighbors could be assured that they had up to date information on how the demolition was affecting air quality.
“We care about the air that we breathe, and we want to know that you are going to commit to reporting these (pollution) levels to us not every two weeks, not twice a month, but as they’re (coming) along,” she said.
A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday said that the city would not make a decision on the five demolition permit applications until it had completed a review of the potential public health impacts of the demolition.
City officials promised neighbors that city personnel would be on-site for the demolition projects and acknowledged requests to make air quality data available on a more frequent basis.
Department of Public Health Managing Deputy Commissioner Megan Cunningham said the likely demolition of the silos falls under a new category of demolitions known as environmentally complex.
“We (created the category) in response to a lot of the concerns that we have heard from many of you in the room about the need to take seriously these demolitions that are occurring in environmental justice areas,” she said.
Cunningham added that the city public health department will soon release a cumulative impact assessment examining how different parts of the city feel environmental burdens from pollution. The assessment would also identify particularly stressed neighborhoods as environmental justice areas, she said.
They also stressed that the city has other levers to control the permitting process and execution for the demolition and would be able to stop the work if something appeared to be going wrong.
If and when the silos do come down, it’s not certain how MAT will develop the land. The company has previously indicated that it plans to build a company headquarters on the site, which it purchased from the state for $6.52 million.
“MAT is committed to building a state-of-the-art headquarters on the Damen Silos site that meets and exceeds the regulatory requirements involved,” owner Tadin said in a statement shortly after news of the purchase broke.
In an emailed statement to the Tribune, Tadin said MAT “will remain open to continued communication with community members” as it evaluates the best use for the property.
“Like so many of tonight’s speakers, we share their passion for and are committed to this neighborhood,” he said.
The company has also pushed back on residents’ complaints about the smell and pollution from its asphalt plant in McKinley Park, saying in a 2022 statement that their facility is “one of the most environmentally friendly asphalt plants in the nation.”
Environmental consequences of the demolition aside, other residents spoke of their disappointment with the likely future of the site at the Tuesday meeting.
Eakin told city officials the plans for the site represented “an immense lack of imagination” and later told the Tribune she has heard of other silo structures being converted into baseball stadiums, public art exhibits or parks.
Representatives from Landmarks Illinois and Preservation Chicago both attended the meeting to call on the city to preserve the site. Both organizations have recently featured the silos as one of the most endangered historic sites in Illinois.
Preservation Chicago Director of Community Engagement Mary Lu Seidel said that not only were the silos part of the city’s agricultural and industrial history, but that they were ripe for what she called “creative reuse” as a riverfront recreational facility.
Other cities with similar abandoned buildings, she offered, had turned them into breweries.
The idea of preserving part or all of the silos resonated with 12th Ward Ald. Julia Ramirez , who sat alongside officials from the city and Berger, of the wrecking company, at the Tuesday meeting.
She later told the Tribune that while the meeting had been intended to focus on public health during demolition, public comments made her think more about what it would take to save the silos. To her, losing the silos would mean “erasing the history of the area in general.”
Tadin said in a statement that he had “a series of productive conversations” with Ramirez and said he’d maintain contact with her and local organizations as the process unfolded.
Ramirez spoke of “coming to a common understanding” with MAT and assessing the site to see what could be salvaged.
“I would like for us to be able to answer some of those things before going straight to demolition,” she said, acknowledging that the final decision will rest with MAT as the property owner.
Ramirez said she would do her best to stall the demolition permit applications to allow for more robust conversations about preservation. In a statement posted to her official social media pages, she said she had asked the Department of Buildings to delay their review of the demolition permits “until an agreement can be reached between the city, the current property owner, and community groups on future redevelopment plans for the site.”
Ramirez said she didn’t have a sense of how long it would take to come to a resolution.
“Everything is changing almost minute by minute,” she said.
Maddie Ellis contributed.
