The Champion Paper Plant was founded as a coating mill in 1894 by Peter G. Thomson, originally buying paper from other Hamilton mills, according to a 1985 Journal-News article by James Schwartz. In 1900, Thomson began construction on Champion’s first paper mill; the three smokestacks, including the last one demolished today, were built a year later.
Green Reclamation LLC, a division of Pennsylvania-based industrial scrap and salvage company Moses B. Glick, LLC who bought the property from the city in 2012, contracted Oklahoma-based Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp. to conduct the demolition.
Mark Frank, Green Reclamation Vice President of General Operations, said that “everything went spectacularly.”
“There was very little shaking, and the smokestack fell to the west like it was supposed to,” he said. “Where we chose to have the fall side, a lot of that is fill material in the former basements, so it wasn’t compacted ground.”
Around 150 to 200 pounds of explosives were used to bring the 180-foot high boiler house and the 220-foot smokestack down, Frank said. Sixteen sets were set between ground level and 10 feet high in the boiler house, and 24 sets in the smokestack up to four feet high.
The boiler house was made of 1,600 pounds of steel, concrete, and brick. The smokestack was composed of several layers of brick. Frank said Green Reclamation would be working with the city to provide any good brick remaining to former Champion workers as keepsakes.
The demolition cost approximately $100,000. Clean-up crews will next use excavators and heavy equipment to sort the debris for waste and recycling before cleaning the site and levelling it off, Frank said. City crews will then come in for final repaving of B Street before reopening the city thoroughfare in early July.
Frank said the mill's historic office building remains intact on the property, and 500,000 square feet of mill still stands. Green Reclamation is currently in talks with developers and the city for the site's development, as packaging companies Zumbiel and New Page, who were slated to lease space on the property, will no longer be moving to the site.
“They weren’t able to make it work,” Frank said.
He added that while they are considering a couple of options, right now, they are moving forward with a plan for an indoor sports complex, possibly including a new stadium for the Hamilton Joes.
“Now, we can relax and keep working to make it a destination for Hamilton,” he said.
City Manager Joshua Smith said he watched the smokestack come down with mixed emotions.
“It was an iconic symbol of Hamilton’s manufacturing prowess,” he added. “Champion’s involvement in Hamilton was greater than a century long, and it is incumbent upon all of us to not forget their significant impact.”
Ray Ingram, 82, worked at Champion Paper as an electrician from 1952 to 1968, and spent most of that time in the boiler house, he said.
He remembered how Mill 2 would print the blue internal revenue papers and the Hamilton Journal-News pink papers, and on days where those papers were printed, the dye would turn the river technicolor.
“I never thought it would come down,” he said. “Never thought they would even close the building. But I got my doughnuts, and my cup of coffee, and I’m going to sit here and watch it come down.”
Kathy Jones remembered that when she moved to Hamilton 44 years ago, Champion was “the place to work.”
“Who would have thought 30 years ago that it would come down,” she said.
Her husband grew up on N. Front Street with his two brothers, John and Darrell, who both remembered running down the river levies across the water from the smokestack.
“It always reminded me of a ship,” Darrell Jones said.
Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller saw the demolition from the Columbia Bridge.
“It’s sad, but it’s also a sign of progress,” he said. “It really dominated that skyline on the west side, and the before and after is quite different.”
Hamilton residents Vicki O’Dell and Kent Lipps said they were looking forward to more development in the city.
“You see RiversEdge in Hamilton … you think it’s a small and rural place, but we get some big, well-organized events,” Lipps said.
“(The mill) is something that had been a landmark that is now going to be recycled,” O’Dell said.
Paper production is Butler County’s oldest industry, predating steelmaking, according to local historical experts.
But the local industry saw a series of setbacks in recent year as business declined.
Franklin Boxboard Corp. in Warren County, which had 81 employees, closed in August 2011.
SMART Papers, formerly Champion Paper, first announced in October 2011 it was winding down operations without a buyer for all or parts of its business. The remaining 200 employees at the North B Street mill in Hamilton, which at one time employed thousands, lost their jobs in a series of layoffs until the mill fully closed in 2012.
Mohawk Fine Papers announced during the same month of 2011 it would close the Beckett Mill on Dayton Street in Hamilton. Approximately137 workers at Mohawk lost their jobs by the time that mill closed in January 2012.
However, Wausau Paper in Middletown, once Sorg Paper, makes towel and tissue paper and is breaking production records.
SMART and Mohawk made fine coated paper used in magazines and to print corporate documents, markets that have declined in the digital age. Their profits were also squeezed by years of foreign paper-makers dumping product in the U.S. at below-market prices, company executives told this newspaper before.
The former Champion and Beckett mills made industrial history. Workers at Beckett Mill invented the first cover papers, a heavier and stronger fiber paper that can be folded and embossed for use in brochures, menus and covers of annual reports. Champion introduced the first two-sided coated paper used for magazines.
Franklin made paperboard, such as cereal boxes.
Staff writer Chelsey Levingston contributed to this report.
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