AUBURN - In its heyday, before it was even called Agway, the feed plant off Columbus Street on the New York Central Railroad line was one of the largest facilities in New York for receiving and shipping grain.
Tim Fuller, right, of Sessler Excavating and Wrecking in Waterloo, adds water to keep the dust down as Dan Sessler operates the backhoe to help bring down the 75-year-old, now abandoned Agway plant on Columbus Street Thursday. Reid Silverman / The Citizen
Dozens of trucks and wagons during the corn and wheat harvest would form a line in front of the then-Grange League Federation Feed Store (GLF) that wound around the plant and down the street. Farmers waited overnight for their turn at the plant's large grain dryer.
On Thursday, the 75-year-old facility met the claw of a backhoe.
The expansive building, including its grain elevators and six concrete silos that were added in 1951, is being demolished. Carovail, the owner of the complex, is tearing it down with the hope of eventually building a new fertilizer plant in its place.
"That's for some time in the future," said Peter Vail Jr., vice president of the company that moved into Cayuga County two years ago on the Agway property and later purchased it. It hired all of Agway's laid-off workers and set to the task of fertilizing farms throughout Cayuga, Oswego, Seneca and Wayne counties.
But Carovail never used the aging and deteriorating plant, which Vail called dysfunctional. Carovail set up its offices across the driveway in the former Agway retail store and used several outbuildings on the property for storage, loading and other functions.
Carovail paid L.M. Sessler Excavating $150,000 to take the building down, according to a demolition permit application on file in Auburn's code enforcement office. Work is expected to run through today.
Before it was Agway, the original facility, built about 1930, was the Grange League Federation feed store. The late Ward O'Hara, who recalled being in some of those grain lines, included a chapter about the Agway complex in his book "Auburn" which he wrote in 1992 to celebrate the city's bicentennial.
The GLF, O'Hara wrote, was the largest cooperative business in the northeast and originated in 1920.
It came about because farmers realized they needed to band together for purchasing and marketing. When the GLF merged with the Eastern States Farmers' Exchange in 1964, Agway was formed. The ag supply and marketing cooperative covered 13 states from Maryland to Maine.
Norm Riley, curator of the Ward O'Hara Agricultural Museum, worked at the plant from 1980 to 1993 as a salesman. He also did business with the company for 35 years when he owned a dairy farm.
"My grandfather sold GLF stock and my father sold the first fertilizer to GLF in Auburn from his farm in Sennett," Riley said.
Riley said it's probably good that Carovail has decided to demolish the plant because, at this point, it's little more than a fire hazard. Still, he's sad to see it go because it played such an important role for agriculture in Cayuga County in the 20th century.
O'Hara wrote that the plant increased rail traffic by several boxcars daily when crops came in seasonally.
There was a big push in the early 1950s for the plant's marketing function. That's when the concrete silos were constructed, so grain could be stored when there was a glut and sold when demand increased.
"Sadly, one of the workers fell to his death while they were being constructed," O'Hara wrote about the silos.
Cayuga County Legislator Ray Lockwood, whose father owned a farm in Throop, remembered the story about the dead construction worker. He also recalled, as a boy of 10 or 12, driving his father's tractor hauling a grain wagon to take his place in the lines on Columbus Street.
"I remember sleeping in the grain wagon and having one of the other farmers moving my wagon up a place in line," Lockwood said.
Agway closed in 2002 when the firm went into bankruptcy. At the time, Carovail looked to pick up the slack on the fertilizer side for area farmers. At first, Carovail hoped to build a plant in the county's industrial park in Aurelius, but the county's Industrial Development Agency didn't see it as a compatible use for the park.
Agway was not initially receptive to allowing Carovail to use its site, so Lockwood offered to sell Carovail a parcel he owned adjacent to his farm on Route 326 in Aurelius. He wanted Carovail to locate here, he said, instead of taking its business to Seneca County, where Vail had also been looking.
"If they didn't come that year, they wouldn't have come here at all," he said.
Preliminary plans that were discussed in Aurelius indicated Carovail would invest $2 million in a plant there.
But officials at Agway relented and Carovail moved into the Columbus Street complex in the spring of 2003, giving up the idea of going to Aurelius. They leased the first year, and then purchased the plant. Vail said his firm, which also has a facility in eastern New York, has realized great success in Auburn and Cayuga County.
Vail said there is no timetable for building a fertilizer plant on Columbus Street.
Staff writer Louise Hoffman Broach can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or louise.hoffman@lee.net
On Thursday, the 75-year-old facility met the claw of a backhoe.
The expansive building, including its grain elevators and six concrete silos that were added in 1951, is being demolished. Carovail, the owner of the complex, is tearing it down with the hope of eventually building a new fertilizer plant in its place.
"That's for some time in the future," said Peter Vail Jr., vice president of the company that moved into Cayuga County two years ago on the Agway property and later purchased it. It hired all of Agway's laid-off workers and set to the task of fertilizing farms throughout Cayuga, Oswego, Seneca and Wayne counties.
But Carovail never used the aging and deteriorating plant, which Vail called dysfunctional. Carovail set up its offices across the driveway in the former Agway retail store and used several outbuildings on the property for storage, loading and other functions.
Carovail paid L.M. Sessler Excavating $150,000 to take the building down, according to a demolition permit application on file in Auburn's code enforcement office. Work is expected to run through today.
Before it was Agway, the original facility, built about 1930, was the Grange League Federation feed store. The late Ward O'Hara, who recalled being in some of those grain lines, included a chapter about the Agway complex in his book "Auburn" which he wrote in 1992 to celebrate the city's bicentennial.
The GLF, O'Hara wrote, was the largest cooperative business in the northeast and originated in 1920.
It came about because farmers realized they needed to band together for purchasing and marketing. When the GLF merged with the Eastern States Farmers' Exchange in 1964, Agway was formed. The ag supply and marketing cooperative covered 13 states from Maryland to Maine.
Norm Riley, curator of the Ward O'Hara Agricultural Museum, worked at the plant from 1980 to 1993 as a salesman. He also did business with the company for 35 years when he owned a dairy farm.
"My grandfather sold GLF stock and my father sold the first fertilizer to GLF in Auburn from his farm in Sennett," Riley said.
Riley said it's probably good that Carovail has decided to demolish the plant because, at this point, it's little more than a fire hazard. Still, he's sad to see it go because it played such an important role for agriculture in Cayuga County in the 20th century.
O'Hara wrote that the plant increased rail traffic by several boxcars daily when crops came in seasonally.
There was a big push in the early 1950s for the plant's marketing function. That's when the concrete silos were constructed, so grain could be stored when there was a glut and sold when demand increased.
"Sadly, one of the workers fell to his death while they were being constructed," O'Hara wrote about the silos.
Cayuga County Legislator Ray Lockwood, whose father owned a farm in Throop, remembered the story about the dead construction worker. He also recalled, as a boy of 10 or 12, driving his father's tractor hauling a grain wagon to take his place in the lines on Columbus Street.
"I remember sleeping in the grain wagon and having one of the other farmers moving my wagon up a place in line," Lockwood said.
Agway closed in 2002 when the firm went into bankruptcy. At the time, Carovail looked to pick up the slack on the fertilizer side for area farmers. At first, Carovail hoped to build a plant in the county's industrial park in Aurelius, but the county's Industrial Development Agency didn't see it as a compatible use for the park.
Agway was not initially receptive to allowing Carovail to use its site, so Lockwood offered to sell Carovail a parcel he owned adjacent to his farm on Route 326 in Aurelius. He wanted Carovail to locate here, he said, instead of taking its business to Seneca County, where Vail had also been looking.
"If they didn't come that year, they wouldn't have come here at all," he said.
Preliminary plans that were discussed in Aurelius indicated Carovail would invest $2 million in a plant there.
But officials at Agway relented and Carovail moved into the Columbus Street complex in the spring of 2003, giving up the idea of going to Aurelius. They leased the first year, and then purchased the plant. Vail said his firm, which also has a facility in eastern New York, has realized great success in Auburn and Cayuga County.
Vail said there is no timetable for building a fertilizer plant on Columbus Street.
Staff writer Louise Hoffman Broach can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or louise.hoffman@lee.net
Citizen
Hot Jobs
New! Off the Menu
The Citizens' Say
Post your comment - click hereThere are No comments posted.