What has become an iconic landmark at MSU will go missing this summer from the Shaw Lane skyline.
MSU administrators decided to move forward with plans to dismantle the MSC smokestack, but demolition crews will save as many of the white bricks that make up the letters as possible, university spokesman Kent Cassella said.
“We’re going to save them until the appropriate commemoration opportunity presents itself,” he said.
The MSC letters represent Michigan State College, the former name of MSU.
The mortar that holds together the bricks of the top 75 feet of the smokestack is “severely deteriorated” and a metal fence at the top is the only thing holding some of the structure in place, university engineer Bob Nestle said.
“That condition is going to continue to get worse,” he said. “It’s just gotten to the point (where) one of these days a brick’s going to fall out.”
The dismantlement of the smokestack likely will begin in June and will take about two months, Nestle said.
The university created a website about the smokestack’s condition in February to propose three options to the public about its preservation. The site received more than 1,300 comments during a one-month feedback period that recently came to a close — the majority of which were in favor of dismantling the smokestack while preserving the white bricks, Cassella said.
The approximate cost of the project is slated at $850,000, but the final cost will be determined when construction bids are put out around mid-May, Nestle said.
Taking down the smokestack without salvaging the symbolic bricks would have cost about $800,000. Repairing the structure would have cost approximately $1.4 million, with an additional $10,000 a year in maintenance costs — a cost that is expected to increase through time.
According to the website, MSU was not in a position to fund repairing the smokestack without receiving funds from outside sources.
Nestle said he estimated about half of the white bricks will be able to be saved. Some of them already are cracked and a few might be broken during the demolition process, he said.
The smokestack was built in 1948, but it has not served any functional purpose for the university since the Shaw Lane Power Plant was taken out of commission in 1975, Nestle said.
Mechanical engineering senior Dan Tepe said he supports the university’s decision to dismantle the smokestack.
“I know it’s a landmark, but you have to look at safety issues and the structural integrity,” Tepe said.
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