Demolition of the former Fulton Bellows & Components plant on Kingston Pike will start a few days before Christmas.

"It's still several weeks away, but we're doing some prep work now - cleaning up the inside of the buildings, abating asbestos. But as far as big machines making lots of noise, that probably won't happen until right before Christmas," project manager Mark Sylvester said Wednesday.

Cost of the demolition is $2 million, according to a permit application filed with the city of Knoxville.

It will take until April or May to completely raze the factory and haul off hundreds of tons of debris, said Sylvester, whose company, ATS2 LLC of Columbia, Md., was hired by the owner to manage the demolition.

What the owner - GPI Interim Inc. of Foxboro, Mass. - plans to do with the property at 2318 Kingston Pike is uncertain. Steven Sacco, who is listed as the owner's contact on the permit application, did not return calls seeking comment on the property's future.

The 450,000-square-foot plant includes five separate buildings. The 12-acre site sits at the west end of the Cumberland Avenue Strip. Railroad tracks border the east side of the property, which slopes to the west to Third Creek.
Protecting the creek will be one of the most difficult aspects of the demolition project, Sylvester said.

"We've gone to substantial effort to make sure the contractor knows how important it is that we not put anything into the creek during the demolition process," Sylvester said.

The demolition contractor is DEMCO Inc. of West Seneca, N.Y., Sylvester said.

The buildings - which are primarily made of brick and masonry block - will be completely razed. Only concrete pads on which the buildings sit will remain when the demolition is complete, Sylvester said.

For more than 100 years Fulton Bellows manufactured bellows - temperature- and pressure-sensitive valves used in machinery, aircraft and medical equipment - from the Kingston Pike site.

The aging factory has been empty since mid-2005, when Fulton Bellows completed a move to the former Bike Athletic plant in Forks of the River Industrial Park in East Knoxville.

Fulton Bellows had leased the Kingston Pike site from Robertshaw Controls, which at one time owned the company.

Financial troubles forced Fulton Bellows to seek bankruptcy protection in 2003. U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Knoxville approved the sale of the company in July 2004 to Morris Capital Management of Chattanooga for $6.3 million.

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