Workers begin tearing apart Everett’s historic Collins Building

EVERETT — An historic waterfront building that dates to the city’s days as a mill town is biting the dust this week.

Community groups, including Historic Everett, worked for many years to save the Collins Building, which was built in 1926 and is considered the last example of the timber-related industries that once crammed the waterfront.

This week, workers for Ascendent, a demolition contractor, used cranes to tear off sections of roof. They plan to whittle away at the former casket company from the top down.

The building was on both the state and national registers of historic places. But it was deemed too expensive to repair, with restoration estimated to cost $11 million.

The Port of Everett recently hired Ascendent to dismantle the building while saving beams, columns, and other pieces that can be used in other historic structures or projects. The company is being paid $299.802 for the work.

“They’ll salvage what they can,” said John Mohr, the port’s executive director.

Municipalities and historic preservation groups will get first pick of the materials.

In a study last year, a consultant found that about 35 percent of the building could be salvaged and that it had a value of $200,000. The beams and posts are considered the most valuable.

In appealing to save the building last year, former port commissioner and former City Council member Ed Morrow said it was a living reminder of community history.

“History and saving some of the past is extremely important to society,” he said. “The Collins Building is the only surviving example of the bay-front mills that were the industrial backbone of our city, the City of Smokestacks.” That was Everett’s nickname as an industrial center.

Now a large part of the 60,000-square-foot building will itself go up a smokestack.

Much of the material will be ground up and burned to produce industrial energy. “Very little of it will be going to a landfill. Just the roofing,” the port’s Larry Crawford said at a commission meeting Tuesday night.

Michael Hoffmann, commission president, said he thought recycling some materials and creating electricity with the rest was a good “balance between efficiency and preservation.”

But the idea didn’t sit well with some.

“It’s going to be ground up for hog fuel to avoid the landfill,” said Valerie Steel, president of Historic Everett. “They’re burning up a national register building.”

Steel said supporters of the building, who filed lawsuits and worked for six years to save it, will hold a wake at 5 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Anchor Tavern.

Port officials had been trying to remove the building for years because it’s in an area that had been slated for a $400 million redevelopment. That project was put on hold when the private developer partnering with the port filed for bankruptcy. But the port still planned to use it for a state-of-the-art boatyard designed to keep pollution out of Puget Sound.

Former port commissioner Phil Bannan once called the building, which was on wooden pilings, “a termite picnic” and said rehabilitating it would be too costly.

Supporters had hoped to convert it into a public market or for some other public use. But port officials said no plans for the building would ever bring in enough money to repay the millions that it would cost to meet building and safety regulations. Private efforts to raise the money were unsuccessful.