Old Gurnee water tower to come down Monday
The old water tower near Fire Station 1, which is something of a Gurnee icon, will be demolished Monday morning, and residents are welcome to watch.
Workers will begin disassembling the structure piece by piece at 7 a.m.
Jack Linehan, the assistant to the village manager, said several residents already have expressed interest in watching the tower come down. The village encourages people to watch the process from the Richard A. Welton Village Plaza across the street from the fire station at 4580 Old Grand Ave.
The project is expected to take seven or eight hours, but Linehan said it might even be done sooner.
Village staff members will document the event for those unable to watch the water tower come down in person.
"We'll be out there taking pictures, using a drone and livestreaming it," Linehan said.
Once the tower comes down, it will be hauled away and scrapped. Linehan said officials briefly discussed preserving part of the structure with the village's written on it, but the cost was difficult to justify.
"It is thousands and thousands of pounds," Linehan said. "There was no real way to do it."
A new water tower, which will be built on village-owned land at 1525 Knowles Road near Rollins Road, will have 10 times the capacity as the old 200,000-gallon tower. The water pressure in Gurnee generally gets worse the farther west you are, so the new tower will be placed where it is needed most.
The new tower will cost about $7 million. Under a plan approved earlier this year, the village will use a $5.5 million low-interest loan from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the difference will be paid with reserve funds.
Linehan said the construction project will go to bid on June 7, and the village anticipates work will start in late summer or early fall.