Grocery warehouse removal for museum nearly complete

Workers are nearing completion in efforts to remove the demolished New Albany Wholesale Grocery warehouse across from the Union County Heritage Museum.

Some of the cleaned and saved brick

The property was purchased by the museum, which continues to grow and needs more space.

A company from south Mississippi is doing the cleanup at no cost to the museum, keeping the material than has value and hauling away the rest. They are primarily separating the brick and large timbers that will be recycled into new structures. The metal will likely be sold for scrap.

The museum is keeping 10,000 of the bricks but it is not known how they will be used. One plan was to use them to pave a parking area, that is needed, on the soon-to-be-vacant lot, but the old brick may not be strong enough for that. Even if part of the lot is used for parking, room should still be available for future museum expansion.

City and museum officials had hoped to save the historic warehouse but when it became available for purchase it was deemed too unstable and too unsafe.