Demolition on landmark begins

The ice business can be a cold mistress, as Jim Jennings knows all too well.

“From Memorial Day to Labor Day, you worked seven days a week, 16 hours a day,” Jennings, 54, recalled. “If you had a cool, rainy summer, it was terrible for business.”

It’s been more than two decades since the Jennings family owned and operated Diamond Ice. Co, a downtown Lynchburg ice plant visible from the John Lynch Bridge.

On Thursday, an entire wall had been ripped from the old brick building, which was built in the 1920s and still displays a faded Diamond logo.

The current owner, Griffin Pipe Products Co., is razing it to create a new storage yard. Its demolition had been part of the company’s long-term plan for years, according to employee Todd Asselborn, but was hastened by the announcement that Lynchburg City needs to take over the manufacturer’s current storage site for combined-sewer overflow improvements.

Griffin Pipe has been in operation downtown, near Amazement Square and The Langley Fountain, since the 1970s. It produces around 130,000 tons of piping every year.

For years, the old ice plant next to its facilities has stood empty, used only for storage. Its destruction was a sad prospect for Jennings, whose family bought Diamond Ice in 1975 and ran it until 1985. They were the last to use the building for ice production.

“(My father) called me one day and asked, ‘You know anything about making ice?’” he said Thursday, recounting the genesis of the family enterprise. “I said, ‘Yeah, you just freeze water.’”

“Boy, did I get an education.”

The Jennings family went on to buy not one but two downtown Lynchburg plants, spending their days producing 300-pound blocks of ice. Production skated along until the flood of 1985, when the banks of the James River overflowed and filled the Diamond plant with water chest-high.

The building survived, but much of the equipment did not. The elder Jennings, who has since passed away, decided it’d be better to retire than start over. Afterward, Jim Jennings went into the car business. Today, he owns Long Mountain Motor Sales in Rustburg.
Griffin Pipe bought the old plant in 1991. Although most of the building was constructed in 1924, a small part of it still dates to the first icehouse put up on that site in the late 1800s, Asselborn said.

When word of its demolition began to circulate early last year, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission approached the company in hopes of salvaging and revitalizing the historic structure.

“We encouraged them to be creative and look at other options it could be used for,” commission member and architect Gary Harvey said. “This is definitely a building that’s going to be missed. It was a noticeable structure right on the river.”

The ice plant sits just outside the downtown historic district, putting it beyond the preservation laws that prevent demolition of aged buildings.

Asselborn, an environmental engineer with Griffin, said he wasn’t aware of any talks with the commission. He did note the company initially considered moving its storage yard off-site, but ultimately concluded razing the icehouse would be less costly.

As early as this summer, the city plans to start replacing some four miles of sewer pipe starting from where the current Griffin storage yard sits and extending up to Reusens Dam. The project is part of the city’s overall goal of replacing an aging and, in some places, collapsing sewer system.

The city could need the Griffin site for up to a year, officials said.

Harvey said the commission was “very” disappointed in the company’s decision, but recognized it had a right to tear the building down. The episode speaks to a larger debate about how the importance of preservation can be balanced with property owners’ rights, an issue preservationists deal with frequently, he said.

“There is this kind of stigma, that’s really misleading, that we’re out there trying to stop people from doing what they want with their property,” Harvey said. “We’re not out there seeking more area to rule over or anything like that.”

Preservation offers positive opportunities for both the community and individual landowners, he said.

Griffin started tearing down the plant’s exterior last week. It anticipates the work will be complete sometime next month.

Jennings, who hasn’t set foot on the site in years, says he plans to make one final visit before it’s gone.

Asked if he missed the business, which involved a good deal of heavy labor, he thought for a second and then chuckled.

“Only when I go somewhere to get a bag of ice and they’re out.”