It's been almost three years since Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital closed its doors after more than a century of care. Actual clean-up and demolition of the site starts this week.
TM Montante Construction has massive plans for the site but it first has to remove everything there now, including the brick tower which looms over Gates Circle. To take advantage of the cash benefits of the state's current brownfields clean-up law, it's all slated to be gone before the end of the year and the first sign of the new will be starting an extension of Lancaster Avenue from Delaware to Linwood.
Montante Public Affairs Director Byron DeLuke says the first work is in the old heating plant on the Linwood side of the property.
"We'll go in inside the plant and start to do abatement and that's on lead, on asbestos, other materials inside the building that we have to take care of, taking some of the contaminants out of the soil, out of the ground such that hopefully within the next three weeks or so, we'll be able to start demoing that building itself," DeLike said.
DeLuke says TM Montante expects to spend around $15 million cleaning up the site and hauling it all away, with much of that cost because the entire complex is filled with asbestos which has to be handled carefully and expensively. Canterbury Woods will replace the hospital tower with a six-story tower holding 53 independent living units.
