On paper, it looks like CL Construction got a bargain. The property has an assessed value of $2.89 million, according to the Lancaster County Assessor's Office.
It's the fourth time the grain elevator has sold since 1999. C-G Grains Co. sold it to Cargill for $4.9 million. In 2013, Cargill sold it for nearly $2.9 million to 3001 Cornhusker Highway LLC.
Three years later, 30th & Cornhusker Lincoln LLC bought it for $3.56 million.
CL Construction plans to spend the next five months breaking down the usable parts. There are several conveyor belts and rollers that can be sold to some of the firm's other agricultural clients.
In January, a team of about nine workers will begin taking down a structure that measures about a quarter-mile long and 20 stories high and consists of more than a billion pounds of concrete and rebar.
The plan for demolition — much like the old joke about how you eat an elephant — is simple. Large excavators will take down the massive grain elevator one bite at a time.
"A claw is probably the way we'll do it," said Matt McCloskey, CL Construction's director of millwrights.
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From there, CL Construction will refine the concrete by separating it from several tons of rebar and breaking it down for sale as well as usage in the company's paving business.
And about two years later, when the grain elevator is down and the concrete is gone, it hopes to sell the land — which is located on a rail spur — to a manufacturing company.
Buying a grain elevator for demolition is a gamble Chris Lautenschlager was willing to take. And it's something he might just do again.
"We saw this as an opportunity to continue to expand our capabilities,"Â Lautenschlager said. "There are many of these structures in the Midwest where people are unable to keep up with the maintenance but don't have the resources to demo them."
Bringing down the grain elevator — Ostwald's first demolition, by the way — is part of the job, but he admitted there are some nostalgic pangs that come with demolishing something with which he is so familiar.
"I've seen this elevator almost every day for 59 years," he said. "... I remember when there was nothing out here. Nothing but this thing. It's been a permanent (fixture)."
The grain elevator now casts a shadow over a nearby Home Depot, Super Saver and various fast-food restaurants — telltale indicators of progress — that have grown up around it in all directions.
Meanwhile, Cornhusker Highway, the main thoroughfare, is alive with east-west traffic and Havelock Yard — a couple of miles to the east — is still a hive of railroad activity and a vital cog in the supply chain.
Lincoln's industrial sector is alive and well, but the clock is ticking on one of its most iconic structures.
"It's going to come down to the ground," Ostwald said.
In 1953 — nearly a decade before the Huskers' longstanding football sellout streak began — the C-G Grain Co. built the grain elevator as a way for Lincoln to compete with Omaha in the commodities market.
It was expanded three times before 1957, doubling its capacity to 12 million bushels and making it the largest operating grain elevator in Nebraska at the time.
The Lincoln Star's B.R. Rothenberger wrote in June 1955 about how Lincoln was challenging Omaha to be Nebraska's grain center.
"From a minor figure just five years ago in Nebraska's grain storage picture, Lincoln will emerge this year from an intensive commercial elevator building program to formidable rivalry with the Omaha-Council Bluffs area for the title of the state's leading grain center," the story stated.
In 1950, Omaha stored 28.7 million bushels to Lincoln's 3.8 million bushels. By 1956, that gap had narrowed exponentially after Omaha posted 27.2 million bushels to more than 22 million bushels in Lincoln, according to the story.
Lincoln's push to build grain elevators helped it become a bigger player in the grain storage business, and the Capital City was projected to have more than 25% of the state's warehousing capacity by the end of 1955, the report said.
The C-G Grain Co. elevator played a large role in bolstering that number.
And the grain elevator, which has changed hands a few times in 71 years, has always been an active storage place for the grains — from corn to beans to oats — that come from all over the state.
After CL Construction purchased the elevator on May 30, there were more than 5.5 million bushels in storage that had to be removed.
"The trucks just kept coming, taking away the grain," McCloskey said. "It was amazing to watch. We gave them whatever time they needed to get them out."
The former Hansen-Mueller grain elevator, near 30th Street and Cornhusker Highway, was built in 1953. It was recently bought by CL Construction at an auction and over the course of the next few years will be demolished.
The former Hansen-Mueller grain elevator, near 30th Street and Cornhusker Highway, was built in 1953. It was recently bought by CL Construction at an auction and over the course of the next few years will be demolished.