By Rusty Nixon
Correspondent

PLYMOUTH – Usually in the business of patching and preserving, Street Superintendent Jim Marquardt’s crews are proving pretty good at tearing things down as well.

“We’ve always had the knowledge and the skills, all we needed was the equipment,” said Marquardt with a chuckle.

City Street Department crews have been working to take down houses along River and LaPorte Streets across from the Farmers’ Market. The homes were purchased with federal grant money designed to clear the Yellow River flood plain.

The razing has gone pretty smoothly for workers.

“Things are going pretty good, easier really than I expected,” said Marquardt. “We’ve got all the houses down on the River Street side and we’re working to get the piles of debris hauled away.”
The large house on LaPorte Street will remain up for a time.

“The Fire Department is going to do some training there (Wednesday night) so we’re leaving it up,” said Marquardt. “I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get it hauled away in time for the Farmer’s Market on Sat-urday anyway and we didn’t want to just leave a pile of debris there. We’ll take it down first thing Monday morning and have it hauled away by next week’s Farmer’s Market.”

Some of the previous homes that were taken down for the city’s flood plain project in the 1990s were contracted out. Mar-quardt says it’s been awhile since his crews have had a chance to tear something down.

“It’s been at least 10 years or so,” he said. “We have to rent that big excavator – it’s not cost effective for the city to own that kind of equipment. I haven’t seen all the landfill tickets yet but we’ve saved money by taking the buildings down ourselves.”