KANNAPOLIS - David Griffin has 10 million bricks, enough to stretch end to end from Charlotte to the Alamo.
As his workers tear them out of the former Pillowtex mill complex in Kannapolis, he's selling them or crushing them for fill.
Griffin's company is turning the bricks, and the rest of this massive piece of textile history, into one of the nation's largest recycling efforts ever.
The century-old Plant No. 1 covered nearly 6 million square feet, about the size of 95 football fields. Now developer David Murdock is clearing it to build his $1 billion biotech hub, the North Carolina Research Campus, on this and adjoining mill sites in downtown Kannapolis.
About 500,000 tons of material will be recycled: everything from steel beams to the nails in the floors to the floors themselves.
Piled up in Bank of America Stadium, it would be enough to rise above the top row of seats.
Some former millworkers are snapping up pieces of their old workplace for their homes, or collecting a souvenir brick.
Kannapolis resident Archie Menscer is a 50-year veteran of Pillowtex predecessor Cannon Mills. His wife, Kathleen, worked there for 45 years. They grabbed their brick over the summer.
"I just like to have something to remember it by," the 88-year-old man said. "Fifty years is almost a lifetime."
Although there are plenty of bricks for people like the Menscers, workers must individually inspect each brick to see whether it's worth reusing.
They use hatchets to chip the mortar off the bricks, some of which are helping to rebuild homes in hurricane-ravaged Alabama and Mississippi.
Broken bricks and concrete are being crushed into 400,000 tons of gravel. They're being used as fill to help level lots and build temporary roads at the site.
D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. of Greensboro has been handling demolition and recycling for Murdock for about half a year now.
More than 80 percent of all material at the site is getting recycled, said Griffin, the company's vice president. That's about double what it would have been a decade ago, thanks to advances in crushing techniques and equipment.
Sawmills are buying the maple flooring after the nails come out. Those quarter-million nails will be melted in steel mills to make, well, more nails.
Griffin also will recycle 10,000 tons of scrap steel, enough to rebuild the Eiffel Tower.
`Every young boy's dream'
The biggest challenge Griffin has encountered is the sturdiness with which the plant was constructed. The Cannons built it to last, he said. Some walls stood five bricks thick.Concrete ceiling and floor beams are especially tricky to handle. Special equipment was brought in to claw off the concrete to get to the reinforcing steel bars inside.
Those machines are called munchers, said Griffin, whose industry is not given to fancy names. It takes up to 10 minutes to munch all the concrete in each beam, and there are more than a thousand of the beams.
A crew of 80 works every day but Sunday. Griffin expects the project will last another 1 1/2 years.
"You get to fulfill every young boy's dream and tear stuff down," he said, "and your mama doesn't holler at ya."
Gold mine
Half the 100,000 tons of material that doesn't get recycled is making its way to the Cabarrus County landfill, including roofing material and wallboard. The rest is used for on-site fill.
Griffin is undaunted by the scope of the project. It's actually the second-largest job his firm has managed, behind the cleanup of the World Trade Center site.
That covered 1.7 million tons of material, but not as much was recycled there as from the Pillowtex site. D.H. Griffin also imploded Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and the old Charlotte Convention Center.
To succeed in the industry, contractors need to know the value of everything they handle, said Mike Taylor, executive director of the National Demolition Association. He praised Griffin's work and said the Kannapolis project was one of the largest he was aware of.
"He's probably sitting on a gold mine," Taylor said.
Griffin declined to get into the recycling's total value, but said it is worth several million dollars.
Heart pine wood from ceiling beams can fetch $8 to $20 per square foot and can be made into flooring. Scrap steel can command about $200 per ton, and medium-grade scrap aluminum, such as siding, can go for 50 cents a pound.
Where it all goes
The recycled material is starting to spread around the nation. Griffin has sold scrap metal to Alabama and Virginia and heart pine to New York. Charlotte's Nucor Corp. has bought steel.Griffin donated a copper awning from the former textile headquarters office to nearby Kimball Memorial Lutheran Church. For months the church housed the community service center for thousands of workers displaced by Pillowtex's 2003 shutdown.
The awning will go up in a few months, saving the church several thousand dollars, Kimball Vice President John Shaver said.
Griffin, whose great-grandfather worked at Cannon Mills, plans to use some of the wood for his company's new headquarters.
As for Menscer, his brick stays in a bag in his back bedroom. He plans to use it as a doorstop.
-- Staff researcher Marion Paynter contributed.
Adam Bell: (704) 786-2185
Now, That's a Lot of Recycling
Recycling estimates from D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. for the former Pillowtex complex:
TOTAL MATERIAL
500,000 tons
enough to fill 50,000 dump trucks.
SCRAP STEEL
10,000 tons
enough to manufacture 6,667 sedans.
BRICKS
10 million
enough to build 625 brick homes.*
HEART PINE BEAMS
5,000
enough to redo the flooring of 500 living rooms.
*SOURCE: National Home Builders Association
WANT A PIECE?
People interested in buying recycled material from the site can call D.H. Griffin at (336) 855-7030. If you want an individual brick, check in at the guard house at Gate 10 off Loop Road in Kannapolis.
WHAT NEXT?
As demolition and recycling continue, work has begun on the biotech campus' first building, the Core Lab.
-- Adam Bell - 2/12/06