After more than 20 years of trying, the Village of Bartonville is moving forward at last with plans to tear down the long-abandoned Allied Mills building on U.S. Route 24.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” said Mayor Leon Ricca. “It’s something that I've had residents asking me for years, since I was on the village board: ‘When are we going to get that thing taken down?’ Now it’s finally going to happen in the near future.”
The village has set a Dec. 1 deadline to receive bids for demolition of the century-old, 11-story tower and adjacent structures on the property.
Ricca said he hopes the work will start shortly thereafter, once the winning bid is selected.
“It could take up to two years on because we’re taking the silos down behind it, and those have asbestos in the tar and on the silver paint,” he said. “That has to be all remediated first, so that’s the first thing that has to happen, and then they’ll blow the buildings.”
Originally built in 1920 as a pet food plant, the dilapidated building has been deemed unsafe. The last business operating there closed in 1988 and the structure has deteriorated into an eyesore — exacerbated by a 2015 fire.
Ricca said the building’s instability hasn’t stopped some people from trying to explore the remnants, despite the dangers.
“We just had eight kids from Dunlap that tried to get in there. Somebody had a post on Facebook, and they ran a story about the building,” he said.
“We tell the cops when those stories come out, just to keep an eye on it. We had these kids down there going in the building, so they all got citations. It’s all marked, ‘Keep out, no trespassing.’”
Ricca said the village has received $250,000 in federal funding to put toward the project, which is estimated to cost between $2 million and $3 million, or more.
“We didn’t get the money we expected, but we’re moving forward with it,” said Ricca. “We’ve been frugal with our money, so we’ve been saving and so we’ve got a pretty substantial amount in the bank. We might have to borrow a little bit, too.”
Ricca said Bartonville spent years trying to get the property’s former owner, Lord Mic Williams, to address the issues at the nuisance property, issuing daily fines for code violations and pursuing other legal actions.
After Peoria County seized the land over unpaid property taxes, Ricca said the village was able to acquire the property.
“He quit paying the taxes, and once he quit paying his taxes, we went in and picked it up from the county trustee,” said Ricca.
Ricca said the contractors and village will coordinate with agencies such as the Illinois Department of Transportation to manage how the demolition impacts traffic on the adjacent highway.
“It’ll all be coordinated with the state highway department, the railroad across the way. Everybody around there will be involved in all of it, and the contractors will take care of that once the bid is let,” he said.
Ricca said the village has already drawn interest regarding possible future uses for the site.
“We’ve got developers talking to us already about different things there, and I can’t say what that is yet,” he said. “That’s the southern gateway into Peoria County in the southwest, and it’s just terrible that that’s the first thing you see.
“To see it come down, it’ll be a glorious day in Bartonville. I know it will for me.”
