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listen to this articleSPRINGFIELD, Ill. — It was the dog that grabbed Chris Richmond’s hand by force when he got stuck atop a skyscraper grain silo on Springfield’s northeast side in 2019.
The outcast reached the top of Pillsbury Mills, a giant corporation that for decades served as the milling engine of the central Illinois economy, but has now been vacant for more than two decades. Officials said a rescue in such decline would be too risky.
The dog’s brief but close call, found dead on the ground days later after ingesting rat poison, reflected the hopelessness of an empty campus, Richmond recalled.
“That’s when I said, ‘This is not acceptable in our community,'” said the 54-year-old former city fire marshal. His father’s Pillsbury salary made him and his younger brother first-generation college graduates.
A year later, Richmond and his allies developed a five-year, $10 million plan with a nonprofit called Moving Pillsbury Forward to demolish the 100-year-old factory and update the 18-acre site.
The group’s president and treasurer, Mr. Richmond, vice president, Polly Poskin, and secretary, Tony Delgiorno, have a commitment of $6 million and a balance collection goal.
The group, which has already destroyed two structures, expects the wrecking ball to swing even harder next year. Located next to a railway factory with national connections, they envision a future in light industry.
Meanwhile, Moving Pillsbury Forward has successfully transformed a dilapidated property in the Illinois capital into a leisure destination that verges on a cultural phenomenon.
The tour is very popular and we have many repeat visitors. Oral history is out. Rather than being arrested, the spray paint vandals were given a boost and became artists in residence at a nightly graffiti exhibition, attended by more than 1,000 people.
Robert Mazrim, a former archaeologist at the University of Illinois, mined artifacts under the roof of a leaky loading dock and built the Echoes of Pillsbury museum. This month, the factory’s towering headquarters will be illuminated with Christmas lights.
Perhaps it is the enthusiasm with which Moving Pillsbury Forward approaches its mission that sets the organization apart. But David Holmes, a Wisconsin-based environmental scientist and brownfield redevelopment consultant, said it’s not unusual for activist groups to pursue such dire reclamation ambitions. talk.
Government funding has increased in response.
“There are some excellent organizations that are focusing on the areas that have the biggest problems, the areas that are most in need,” Holmes said. “Cities often [local governments] They’re focused on their downtown and getting the mayor to cut the ribbon. ”
Minneapolis-based Pillsbury built its Springfield campus in 1929 and expanded several times through the 1950s. After World War II, the Bakery Mix Division created the world’s first boxed cake mix.
There is circumstantial evidence that the brand’s inventive mascot, Pillsbury’s Doughboy, was first drawn not by a Chicago advertising agency, as the company claims, but by a Springfield factory manager who avoided credit.
Pillsbury sold the plant to Cargill in 1991, but Cargill withdrew ten years later. In 2015, a scrap company violated the law by improperly disposing of asbestos, resulting in a $3 million cleanup by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After the dog’s cameo, Moving Pillsbury Forward convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to drop its lien for cleanup costs and purchased the property for $1.
Now, all that remains is the city’s 242-foot-tall headquarters, the third-tallest structure in the city, and more than 500,000 square feet of factory space, including 160 silos, 100 upright, four in a row. All you have to do is sweep away any remaining asbestos and lead paint debris. feet.
“It’s mind-boggling. Everything about this place is mind-boggling,” Richmond admits. “But a 1,000-mile journey begins with the first step, right?”
The timing is right. According to Holmes, there has never been more money available to clean up America’s marginalized people.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 includes $1.2 billion for brownfield cleanup costs, four times the normal annual allocation. Pillsbury Group wants to add $2.6 million of that total to what the federal, state and Springfield governments have already committed to the group.
This application highlights intangible benefits. This means economic and environmental justice for 12,000 people who live within one mile of a power plant, but only 25% of them have a high school diploma and the median household income is $25,000. be.
“This is a tough sell, but there are enough people who have the vision that at some point it could be a powerful incentive,” Poskin said. “Nothing will happen until what’s there is gone. No developer will take on a $10 million cleanup job.”
The group also set out to preserve the memory of the places it plans to demolish. Former workers and neighbors are vying for spots on ongoing tours and posing for group photos.
In the list of historical seniority on display, next to “Jackson, Ernest, 1937,” there is a text that says, “Hello, Grandpa. We are visiting your 42-year-old workplace.” Richmond and Mazrim. More than a dozen oral histories were collected from past employees. Photographers record what remains as historical context.
And it became an unlikely canvas. Minneapolis-based graffiti artists, tagging their work “shock” and “static,” had been secretly decorating the site in September, when Richmond and Mazrim faced off. In exchange for trespass charges, Richmond invited them to hold an exhibition. The November night show was so popular that Richmond added a second date.
Artist Eric Rieger, known to fans as HOTTEA, also participated, creating a giant rectangular grid of neon threads suspended from the ceiling and illuminated by black lights in a “cathedral-like” setting. did. His goal was a “really positive sense of energy” that reminded employees of fond memories they had experienced.
“They were very enthusiastic, which is rare these days,” Rieger said on Nov. 9, the night of the first exhibit. “I really respect what they did for this community because they were the backbone of America and they were the ones who nourished America.”
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