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Demolition begins at Warren GE Ohio Lamp Plant
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Preparation work has begun on the $2.4 million demolition of the 354,000 square foot historic General Electric Ohio Lamp Plant on Dana Street Northeast.
The approximately 100-year-old facility was GE’s last factory that made only incandescent light bulbs when it closed at about this time last year after concessionary contract talks failed to produce a new contract. More than 180 people worked there.
The factory has historic significance for Warren because the Packard brothers first manufactured incandescent light bulbs at that location around 1890, before building their first Packard automobile there in 1899 and later selling off their light-bulb business to focus on wiring harnesses.
Packard automobile production moved to Michigan in 1902, and GE took over the light-bulb operation about 1916 — about the time historians believe the first building at the GE plant was constructed.
Historians believe all of the buildings the Packard brothers used at that site were removed either early last century or after that.
GE has hired Saber Demolition Corp. of Warners, N.Y., to handle the demolition, and work has been ongoing for several weeks. The most noticeable work so far has been the installation of a fence around the facility and removal of the windows.
The demolition permit filed with the city doesn’t say how long the demolition will take, but it says the bricks and mortar will begin to come down starting from the back of the structure farthest from North Park Avenue.
When the building has been leveled and building materials removed, the site will be graded and seeded, and a more-permanent chain-link fence will be installed.
Chris Tanneyhill, Warren building official, said GE has met all of the city’s demolition requirements.
Community activist Dennis Blank, founder of the organization Gregg’s Gardens, which has focused on revitalizing the 22-block area just north of downtown now called the Garden District, however, has taken issue with the look of the former GE site on West Market Street.
“This featureless, barren lot is about equal parts grass, weeds and bare patches of hard pan surrounded by an 8-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire,” Blank wrote in July to the CEO of GE.
“It resembles nothing so much as a Hollywood version of a maximum-security prison yard. All it lacks are the gun towers.”
Blank’s letter does thank GE for “doing the right thing and demolishing its old factory buildings in Warren rather than leaving them to deteriorate and blight our community, which is already burdened with thousands of vacant houses and commercial structures.”
Blank and Matt Martin, director of the nonprofit Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, which runs the county land bank and has worked for several years on revitalization of Warren’s neighborhoods, have continued to talk to GE in recent months about possible aesthetic improvements to the West Market Street location, such as a more-attractive type of fencing and art installations.
The discussions are ongoing, Martin said Tuesday.
Blank’s letter also addressed the Dana Street location.
“This parcel is at the corner of North Park and Dana, on Warren’s main north-south street, and is barely a half-mile from our historic downtown Courthouse Square,” Blank noted. “... We do feel strongly that it is GE’s responsibility to leave Warren looking as good as a reasonable effort can leave it.”