Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- The two head houses that remain of a giant grain elevator in west Ogden will be imploded Saturday.
- The site, owned by Patriot Rail, is being marketed for industrial development.
- Ogden officials urge the public to avoid the area, and they plan a live broadcast of the implosion.
OGDEN — What goes up must come down, and the two tall head houses still standing at the site of a giant Weber County grain elevator that's been largely demolished will finally come tumbling down, more than eight months after deconstruction started.
The tall storage bins, representative of the county's agrarian roots, closed three or four years ago, and the owner, Jacksonville, Florida-based Patriot Rail, is marketing the land, abutting a rail line, to would-be buyers. "Build to suit. Ideal for transload, manifest, warehousing and railcar storage," reads a marketing document.
First, though, the land needs to be cleared, and the two head houses are to be imploded Saturday morning, the next step in the demolition process. The process is designed such that the debris falls mainly within the footprint of the 20-acre site. But Pennsylvania Avenue and Midland Drive around the west Ogden site at 2800 Pennsylvania Ave. near the I-15 interchange at 24th Street will be closed to traffic from around 6-10 a.m. on Saturday as a safety measure.
"It'll create a significant amount of dust, and it'll take a while for that to settle," said Mike McBride, spokesman for Mayor Ben Nadolski. The implosion, he said, will also be loud.
The land around the industrial site is privately owned, and city officials ask the public to steer clear of the area. Ogden police and firefighters will be on hand to secure the 750-foot radius "exclusion zone" around the site.
The zone "will be off limits to vehicles and pedestrians and will be strictly enforced. Please respect private property, and do not impede traffic. Please avoid the area during this time," reads a Facebook post by the city of Ogden. Given the interest in the planned implosion, though, the city will provide a live broadcast of the demolition, scheduled for 8 a.m., on its Facebook page.
The demolition prompted a measure of nostalgia among some given the historic importance of agriculture to Weber County when the work started earlier this year. "I guess that's what you call progress. The world's changing. The area's changing," Dean Martini, a Weber County farmer, said last March. "I'm always sad to see a big change like that."
Demolition actually started in mid-February, with large crane-like devices picking the many grain bins around the head houses to pieces. The structure was completed in 1941, according to articles from the period in Ogden's Standard-Examiner, with the storage bins measuring as tall as 110 feet and the two head houses rising up 185 feet.
As of Friday, in preparation for Saturday's demolition, "blast mats" were being placed around the head houses to prevent flying debris, according to Ogden photographer Dennis Montgomery.
Looking forward, McBride isn't sure what will come of the privately owned land, which Patriot Rail calls the Ogden Transload Facility. "We really don't know what the future holds for the space," McBride said.
The Patriot Rail marketing document touts the site's location — near I-15 and 35 miles north of Salt Lake City. "Due to the region's limited warehouse and transload capacity, the Ogden Transload provides an optimal location to develop new infrastructure to support these areas of need," it reads.
