New Mill Capital LLC, the owner of the large former Kaiser Aluminum Corp. Mead Works smelting plant property north of Spokane, is readying for the second phase of demolition at the long-shuttered plant, says Ken Hoff, site manager. 

Hoff says he hopes bidding will open this month for that phase, with work slated to pick back up this fall. 

Demolition at the plant, which was purchased by Los Angeles-based New Mill Capital in 2012, is about 35 percent completed, says Hoff. Removal of asbestos and galbestos, which is asbestos that has been coated with a compound to make it stick to surfaces, is about 70 percent completed, he says. 

The first phase of demolition at the site began in the spring of 2013 and was completed in December, Hoff says. New Mill Capital contracted with New York-based LVI Services Inc. for that initial phase, he says. 

New Mill Capital, which is a subsidiary of Downey, Calif.-based Industrial Realty Group LLC, purchased the property for $1.5 million from Commercial Development Co., of St. Louis. Kaiser Aluminum sold the plant, located on 184 acres of land at 2111 E. Hawthorne, to Commercial Development in 2004 for $7.4 million. 

Hoff has worked at the plant site for about 37 years, he says; first in various positions for Kaiser Aluminum, and then as a site manager for both Commercial Development and New Mill Capital. He’s currently New Mill Capital’s only employee there.  

The company also has applied for renewal of a national pollutant discharge elimination system permit with the Washington State Department of Ecology that would enable the owners to discharge stormwater. 

Patrick Hallinan, a water quality official with the department’s eastern regional office, says, “Right now, the only discharge is from site stormwater, so that’s what the permit authorizes.” 

All the stormwater from the plant currently drains into Deadman Creek, Hallinan says. The conditions of the permit mostly deal with the level of pollutants the stormwater may contain, such as metals, oil, grease, and solid wastes.

The current permit dates back to Kaiser Aluminum’s ownership of the plant a decade ago, Hallinan says; it’s been operating on what’s known as an extended permit. The application for renewal was submitted in late 2010.  

“The permits are typically five-year terms,” Hallinan says. 

After a renewal application is submitted, he says, the department inspects the site and then develops a proposed permit with new discharge conditions based on current requirements, the company’s application, and the inspection, he says. 

Next up is a public-comment period, which will run until June 28. After that, Hallinan says the department will consider the comments and make any necessary changes to the permit, and then issue it. 

Hoff says the new discharge permit won’t have any major changes from the original. 

“There are some extra things they want to start testing for,” he says. “Some of the time scheduling and frequencies (of testing) may have changed.”

New Mill Capital’s plan for the site is to turn it into an industrial park that could potentially house between 15 and 20 businesses, Hoff says. 

“New Mill Capital has drawn up for what it potentially could look like,” Hoff says. “They have plans for small buildings across the front, medium ones across the middle, and the giant ones across the back.” 

The timeline for completion isn’t concrete at this time, he says. By the time it’s completed, the industrial park could include as many as 20 to 25 buildings, Hoff says, and possibly up to 1 million square feet of floor space. 

 “Sometimes things go quickly, sometimes there are slow-ups,” he says. 

In addition to demolition and cleanup, New Mill Capital has auctioned off almost all the equipment from the former plant, Hoff says. 

“They left me an old pickup,” he says. 

A few of the existing buildings are in good enough condition to be leased, Hoff says. Long Beach, Calif.-based A.J. Edmond Co., a company that does sampling and analysis of petroleum coke, coal, carbon, sulfur, iron ore, anodes, cathodes, and biomass, has leased about 5,000 square feet of space at the site for a research laboratory since 2004, Hoff says. He says New Mill Capital is working on leasing some of the other vacant buildings, but doesn’t have any other tenants at this time. 

The company has been working on the redevelopment since it acquired the site in early 2012 from Commercial Development, which put the plant up for sale quickly after purchasing it from Kaiser Aluminum, Hoff says. 

“Within months they were trying to offer the plant up for sale; they had numerous buyers come through and see if the plant would work for them, and it didn’t for any of them,” he says. “In 2012 … New Mill Capital came up here and looked the whole site over and decided they wanted to go ahead and buy the plant for demolition and redevelopment.” 

The Mead Works plant was built in 1942 by Defense Plant Corp. and was operated by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) until Kaiser purchased it in 1946. For an extended period, the plant was one of Spokane’s largest employers. Kaiser operated the plant until it began to curtail operations in 2000, eventually selling to Commercial Development. 

When operational, the plant had eight aluminum reduction potlines, an anode plant, air emission control equipment, pot-reworking facilities, indoor storage facilities and other miscellaneous buildings. In the process of smelting, the term “pot” is used to refer to the vessel in which alumina is dissolved with other elements and aluminum is separated out. The pots were connected to form “potlines,” which were housed in long, large buildings.