Decaying Pillsbury mill in Illinois that once churned flour into opportunity is now getting new life

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois.- It was the dog, trapped atop grain silo skyscrapers on Springfield’s northeast side in 2019, that forced Chris Richmond to act.

The stray dog ​​had reached the top of the giant Pillsbury Mills, for decades an engine of the central Illinois city’s economy, but which has now been vacant for more than 20 years. The rescue was too risky amid such deterioration, officials said.

The brief but precarious appearance of the dog, found dead at ground level days later after ingesting rat poison, represented the hopelessness that the empty campus represented, Richmond recalled.

“That’s when I said, ‘This is just unacceptable in our community,’” said the 54-year-old retired city fire chief, whose Pillsbury salary from his father made him and his brother first-class college graduates. generation.

A year later, Richmond and its allies emerged with a nonprofit called Moving Pillsbury Forward and a five-year, $10 million plan to demolish the century-old plant and renovate the 18-acre (7.3-hectare) site.

Richmond, the group’s president and treasurer, Vice President Polly Poskin and Secretary Tony DelGiorno have $6 million in commitments and goals to collect the balance.

Having already torn down two structures, the group expects the wrecking ball to swing even more feverishly next year. Next to a railway station with national connections, they imagine a light industrial future.

Meanwhile, Moving Pillsbury Forward has managed to turn the decrepit site of Illinois’ capital into a leisure destination on the verge of a cultural phenomenon.

The tours have been very popular and repeated. Oral histories have emerged. Spray paint vandals, encouraged rather than arrested, have become artists-in-residence at nightly graffiti exhibitions, attended by more than 1,000 people.

Retired University of Illinois archaeologist Robert Mazrim removed artifacts and set up an “Echoes of Pillsbury” museum under the roof of a leaky loading dock. This month, the plant’s imposing headquarters is illuminated with Christmas lights.

Perhaps the exuberance with which Moving Pillsbury Forward approaches its task sets it apart. But in terms of activist groups pursuing such formidable reclamation aspirations, it’s not unusual, said David Holmes, a Wisconsin-based environmental scientist and brownfield redevelopment consultant.

Government funding has expanded to accommodate them.

“You find some high-caliber organizations that are really focused on the areas with the biggest problems, these most needy neighborhoods,” Holmes said. “A lot of times, cities (local governments) focus on their downtowns or whatever makes the mayor cut the ribbon.”

Minneapolis-based Pillsbury built the Springfield campus in 1929 and expanded it several times during the 1950s. A baking mixes division after World War II produced the world’s first boxed cake mixes.

There is circumstantial evidence that the Pillsbury Doughboy, the brand’s key mascot, was first drawn by a credit-avoiding Springfield plant manager, and not, as the company maintains, at a Chicago advertising agency.

Pillsbury sold the plant in 1991 to Cargill, which abandoned it a decade later. A scrap metal dealer broke the law for improperly removing asbestos in 2015, prompting a $3 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleanup. After the dog cameo, Moving Pillsbury Forward convinced the EPA to drop a lien for its cleanup costs and purchased the property for $1.

Now, all that’s left is to sweep up the remains of asbestos and lead paint before tearing down more than 500,000 square feet (46,450 square meters) of factory, including a 242-foot (73.8-meter) header that is the third tallest from the city. structure and 160 silos, four deep and 100 feet (30.5 meters).

“It’s discouraging. Everything about this place is discouraging,” Richmond acknowledges. “But a journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step, right?”

The moment is right. According to Holmes, there is more money than ever available to clean up those left behind in America.

The Infrastructure Jobs and Investment Act of 2021 included $1.2 billion for brownfield cleanup, four times the typical annual allocation. The Pillsbury group wants to add $2.6 million of the total to what the federal, state and Springfield governments have already promised the group.

The request highlights the intangible benefits: economic and environmental justice benefits the 12,000 people who live within 1.61 kilometers (1 mile) of the plant, of whom only 25% have a high school diploma and whose Median family income is $25,000.

“It’s a tough sell, but at some point there are enough people who have a vision of what it could be and that’s a powerful incentive,” Poskin said. “There will be nothing until what is there disappears. “No developer will take a $10 million cleanup job.”

The group also set out to preserve memories of the place they are working to tear down. Former workers and neighbors have clamored for spots on ongoing tours and posed for group photos.

In a list of historical antiquity displayed, next to “Jackson, Ernest, 1937,” is the message “Hello Grandpa. We are visiting his 42-year-old workplace.” Richmond and Mazrim have collected more than a dozen oral histories from former employees. Photographers are documenting what remains of the historical context.

And it has become an unlikely canvas. Minneapolis graffiti artists who tag their works “Shock” and “Static” were surreptitiously decorating the site in September when Richmond and Mazrim confronted them. Instead of bringing a charge of trespass, Richmond invited them to put on an exhibition. The November evening performance proved so popular that Richmond added a second date.

Artist Eric Rieger, known to fans as HOTTEA, also participated, creating in a “cathedral-like” setting a huge rectangular grid of black-lit neon thread strands suspended from the ceiling. His goal was “a sense of really positive energy” that would recall the good memories employees were experiencing.

“They were very enthusiastic and that’s rare to find these days,” Rieger said the night of the first exhibit on Nov. 9. “I really respect what they did for this community because they are the backbone of America – they were feeding America.”

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Associated Press researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed.