Demo of historic buildings underway

TYRONE - Two more historic Tyrone buildings are coming down.

Demolition of the former Seabrook Blanching Corp.'s Flavored Nuts building, its adjacent storefronts and garage that spans the 1300 blocks of Logan and Pennsylvania avenues and the Garman building, situated at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 10th Street, is in full swing.

"These two buildings needed to come down," Tyrone Borough Code Enforcement Officer Jim Metzgar said recently. Both buildings were ordered to be demolished after the borough pursued the owners in court.

The Seabrook Blanching building, commonly called the peanut factory, has been largely vacant since the company stopped operations in Tyrone in the mid-1980s. When Thomas Wick of Pittsburgh looked into buying the building in 1993, he said that he intended to convert it into a hotel with a restaurant. He said at the time borough officials indicated his plans wouldn't be a problem, but that changed once he bought it.

"They decided they wouldn't support my permit," Wick said recently.

Wick said he was able to rent out the property's storefronts and apartments until a 2004 electrical fire prompted borough officials to condemn the structure.

Potential buyers, he said, were scared off by the threat of buying a property that would have to be torn down, and that was eventually ordered by the courts in May.

The experience has put a financial strain on his family and expressed frustration with borough officials over the years in hindering his renovation plans, Wick said. The demolition is being financed through a mortgage agreement with the contractor for the job, Demolition & Construction LLC of Alexandria.

The adjacent Carriage House apartment building was razed after a December fire, and Metzgar said that with the demolition of the former peanut factory, the block will be more attractive to development.

Glenn Ray, owner of G&R Excavating & Demolition, said the Garman building's distinctive cornice with its name and the year of its construction - 1910 - has been donated to the Tyrone Area Historical Society, and crews are working on bringing the rest of the three-story building down piece by piece.

"We're being really careful because of the common wall," said Ray, referring to the wall the building shared with its neighboring building on the 900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Garman building's owner, William Loner, did not respond to a request for comment about the demolition or his future plans for the parcel.

Both demolitions are expected to take about a month, Metzgar said.

Tyrone Mayor Jim Kilmartin said he was "excited about seeing these blighted buildings coming down" and that "they have been left go far too long, and something needed to be done." Still, he said it was bittersweet because they were a part of the town's history but eventually became eyesores.

"Sometimes you need to remove the old to make room for the new, and Tyrone is primed for progress," Kilmartin said.

Mirror Staff Writer Greg Bock is at 946-7458.