Seven months after it purchased the former Pillsbury Mills plant on the north end of town, the nonprofit group responsible for clearing the property provided a first look at progress made on the site Wednesday prior to a public meeting.

Chris Richmond, president of Moving Pillsbury Forward and a former Springfield fire marshal, hosted the tour of the vacant site, showing off a series of buildings deemed safe for showcasing to small groups. Richmond displayed several artifacts found during cleanup of the property conducted over the summer, including tools, a map of the property from 1966, hand-made grain scoops and chairs along with an old Pillsbury's Best flour sack.

"The wrenches are the kind you would have seen pre-World War II," Richmond said. "I'm sure these are 75 years or older."

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Richmond and his organization completed their purchase of the property in March, with environmental testing and cleanup of the site being conducted throughout the summer. The property was home to a thriving grain and flour plant that had thousands of employees at its peak in the 1950s before a significant decline. When Pillsbury sold the plant to Cargill in 1991, about 350 workers were there, with 200 of them being transferred to Tennessee as part of a company restructuring.

Cargill operated the facilities for a decade before shutting down in 2001 with 45 workers operating the flour mill. Since then, the property has gone into a significant state of disrepair, particularly after Cargill sold it for scrap in 2008.

Attempts by the property's former owners to remove asbestos turned into lawsuits and legal trouble. A part-owner of a demolition company which oversaw the scrapping of the plant and some demolition served prison time for violating federal clean-air regulations during those attempted removals.

The areas toured still have a decent amount of lead paint peeling off the walls, but work conducted by environmental engineers hired by Moving Pillsbury Forward helped to identify which areas have more exposure to potentially deadly asbestos than others.

"We've done asbestos and lead testing," Richmond said. "We know there's a fair amount of peeling lead paint, but there's not a significant asbestos issue in (the grocery warehouse) and other buildings. We had over 100 asbestos samples taken from trained asbestos inspectors that were on site for two days."

Richmond said engineers did 70 core soil samples throughout the site. The site has "generally elevated" levels of arsenic, he said, about twice the amount that naturally occurs in the soil.

Richmond said in the past Pillsbury likely would have used pesticides with arsenic. Railroad ties, soaked in creosote, would have had arsenic in them as well.

Richmond explained much of the history and current status of the buildings. The western half of the site still has the warehouse floor despite much of the existing structure being demolished in prior years, while the eastern half was cleaned up from the kind of heavy vegetation that had taken root in the years since Cargill left in 2001.

The hope is for the remaining buildings to be demolished in order to allow for potential economic development, with some buildings being tipped for the wrecking ball sooner than others. A warehouse next to the grocery mix building and the bakery mix complex are top priorities for the nonprofit to get out of the way, as they possess significant risks if they continue to remain standing.

"I'm really concerned as we head into winter if we get a heavy, wet snow and some freeze and thaw, that a lot of this might come down on its own," Richmond said. "It creates a little bit more of a dangerous situation than what we have now. We've looked at demolition sequencing on the site and this is the building that is right in front of the demolition sequence. We want to get this demolished and taken down as soon as possible."

That kind of demolition will be part of a five-year plan that is currently ongoing, with the cleanup and environmental work being the first phase of the project. Federal, state and local grant funding will be used to assist with the demolition work, with the buildings being taken down before any of the grain silos.

Eventually, Richmond sees the site as a potential spot for light or medium industrial manufacturing once the site is cleared. He pointed out that the closure of the plant in 2001 and the sale from Pillsbury to Cargill 10 years prior were significant blows to the community, with the economic toll still something the city is recovering from.

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"It was really a dramatic blow to the community," Richmond said. "When Pillsbury sold this facility to Cargill in 1991, it sold for nearly $20 million. Just the property tax alone in today's dollars is $600,000-700,000 into local coffers for schools, roads and sewers. Right now, the property is virtually value-less."

Despite that, Richmond believes the potential of the property is high for someone willing to bring a light manufacturing-type company to Springfield, with a large potential workforce in the area and resources that could bring millions if a company decides to take a chance.

"We'd like to attract industry and jobs to the area," Richmond said. "We've got 12,000 people that live within one mile of the site and that's a workforce ready to work. If we clear these 18 acres and attract light or medium industry that brings 100 jobs, it's got tens of millions of dollars worth of economic activity."

Richmond said there are still "regular trespassers" at the site.

"The buildings are very attractive to thrillseekers and there are still metal thefts taking place with regularity," Richmond said. "The thing I'm concerned with are the fall hazards and the dangers associated with the buildings, such as the open elevator passageways."

He is working with Springfield police regularly and has made two police reports in the last two weeks ago.