After months of demolition, only piles of rubble and the base concrete floor of an abandoned industrial factory near Blue Valley Middle School in south Overland Park remains.
Efforts to raze and clean up the Kuhlman Diecast plant near 164th Street and Mission Road began in June when the Johnson County Commission approved the use of $725,000 from general fund reserves for the project.
Shut down in 1990 after Kuhlman went bankrupt, the 74,000-square-foot warehouse had been a concern of neighboring residents who said it was a local magnet for unsupervised teens and potential illegal activity.
Now, the county is working to finish the cleanup process, with hopes of the land potentially becoming a park in the future.
More work to be done
The demolition of the old plant was expected to be completed by early 2022, however, unforeseen circumstances have pushed the finishing date back to sometime this spring, Johnson County project manager Kyle Heltne said.
Large vaults and chases found underneath the warehouse’s structure were a main component as to why demolition has taken longer than predicted.
“I’m not sure what they were used for, but we definitely weren’t expecting them,” Heltne said. “We wouldn’t have been able to know about them until we got to this point in the process either.”
Although it has taken extra time, the county has also made a concerted effort to sort out the steel from the masonry rubble of the warehouse’s remains.
“We cut up and sent all the steel to a recycling center,” Heltne said. “The money we received from doing so has really helped us keep the cost down on this project.”
Heltne said the final steps left in this phase of the project is to remove the rubble and complete the abatement process before leveling the land and stabilizing the soil that has been disrupted.
The future of the site
The removal of the decrepit Kuhlman plant was just the first step for this piece of land that is near several homes and schools in the Blue Valley School District.
While the property does not belong the county, Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara says she has hopes that it will in the future so the land can turned into a public park.
The likelihood of the property eventually falling under the county’s domain is high, she pointed, because liens on the land have scared prospective buyers away in the past.
“This land has great access to trails and is near several subdivisions, so it would be a wonderful addition into the park system,” O’Hara said.
Future use and additional phases of construction for the property will be decided at a later date after the last remains of the Kuhlman plant are gone.
