Demolition begins on historic Imperial Brewing building in Kansas City
It’s time to raise a glass to Kansas City’s former Imperial Brewing Co. building: Demolition has started for the 121-year-old historic structure, which for some time has been described by its local owners as too far gone for restoration.
A joint venture of Copaken Brooks and Dean Realty Co. on Monday began tearing down the former brewery at 2825 Southwest Blvd. and a nearby stables building, after the city issued a $375,000 demolition permit for the brick structures south of the Westside neighborhood that same day.
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The six-story former brewery has sat vacant since 1985, when the Boulevard Mill closed its flour milling operations.
Dean Realty bought the property in 2007, got the brewery listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, carried out an extensive renovation and salvage effort and in 2017 floated several adaptive reuse ideas, including for offices, lofts, a boutique hotel, manufacturing uses or even a new brewery.
“We considered, for the longest time, trying to preserve the building or some of it, but that was just impossible, and we felt like, after all this time, that it just needed to come down,” said Copaken Brooks Principal Bucky Brooks, who described the vacant brewery as dilapidated and potentially dangerous.
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Brooks said demolition of the former brewery structures probably will take place within a two-week period, followed by debris hauling and site grading. An associated hauling permit indicates that as much as 3,500 cubic yards of debris could be taken to a Kansas City, Kansas, disposal site through mid-February.
Read more in the Kansas City Business Journal.
