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What followed has been a $100 million effort to restore a 640,000-square-foot plant to new life, the most complicated construction effort that most Shook Construction Co. workers have ever undertaken. The work is reviving what was perhaps the largest employer impacted by the Memorial Day tornado outbreak.
Some five months after the tornadoes, the project is still in its demolition stages, navigating structural and other issues.
A late shift of about 13 workers were on the job at the 1919 Kuntz plant when a tornado ripped through after 11 p.m. May 27. The storm ripped the roof off and bounced massive air handlers around like huge metal basketballs. Those workers were able to retreat to a fortified safe area in the building’s interior and rode the storm out.
No one was injured.
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Tim Knueve, vice president of industrial for Shook, said that when he first surveyed the plant’s damage in the hours after the Monday evening tornadoes, “I was stunned.”
“I have never done a project like this,” said Knueve, who has worked in construction for more than 20 years.
When Kooken first spoke with Knueve about a reconstruction timeline, he asked how many “weeks” the project take, recalled Jeff Schlarman, a Shook construction superintendent.
Shook had to break the news to Kooken: The project likely will not be finished until the end of 2020.
“Every day, it’s like, ‘OK, how do we deal with this?’” Knueve said. “‘How do we deal with that?’”
He added: “It has been interesting.”
“We had no idea of the depth of the damage to the facility,” Kooken said in a recent interview.
No one did.
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Work began almost as soon as the wind died down. Industrial equipment manufacturer Dayton Phoenix makes equipment and products for the locomotive and mining industries. Once the company shipped products that had been completed before the tornadoes, it took about six weeks for new production to begin, Kooken said.
About 240 of the company’s 300 Dayton employees have temporarily moved work to a former Delphi auto parts plant on Northwoods Boulevard in Vandalia. Workers spent a week cleaning the plant and replacing 3,000 light bulbs before getting production going in June.
In fact, the company has not only resumed work, it has expanded its workforce by about 15 employees. (Dayton Phoenix Group has about 100 workers in locations outside Dayton.)
The business lost only one employee in the tornado aftermath, a worker who took a job with a former employer, Kooken said.
Some production — taking up about 175,000 square feet — remains in the Kuntz Road plant, temporarily screened off with insulation, sheet metal or large sheets of heavy plastic.
The weather this year has not been kind to the rebuilding effort. One of the rainiest spring and early summer seasons of recent memory compounded much of the tornado’s initial damage, soaking steel and equipment left vulnerable to the open sky.
“One of the worst things you can do to metal is get it wet,” Knueve said.
Structural engineers came on site to help guide workers on buttressing parts of the building so that work would be safe. Reconstruction of a plant this massive is far more complicated that building new, said Larry “Moe” Mileski, a construction superintendent who came out of retirement to help oversee the project.
“If we could just build a new site, no problem,” he said.
But that isn’t what leaders of Dayton Phoenix wanted. The company has been in this location since “day one,” Kooken said, and they plan to stay.
“This is home,” he said. “We want to be an anchor for this North Dayton area. That’s what we intend to be.”
He put the project’s price tag at about $100 million — for everything, the building, its inventory and equipment.
Asked about insurance, Kooken said the company has hired an intermediary — not a law firm — to deal with their insurance company.
“We deal with the insurance company every day,” Kooken said. “Their goal is to pay out as little as they can. Our goal is, we have a policy that you need to cover.”
Tornado Recovery
The Dayton Daily News is investigating obstacles to recovery for survivors of this year's Memorial Day tornadoes, and exploring opportunities for our region to rebuild stronger. As part of this effort, reporters Josh Sweigart and Chris Stewart, along with Storm Center 7's Chief Meteorologist McCall Vrydaghs, are walking the path of the largest tornado that touched down that night. Together they are getting a close look at the damage and talking to survivors. Find our coverage here.
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