Decatur’s 40-year-old Callaway Building is getting “deconstructed” story by story, according to Assistant City Manager Lyn Menne, who adds the structure isn’t large enough for actual implosion.
She isn’t sure how long demolition will take, though she anticipates having more information by next week.
Decatur bought the five-acre Callaway property from DeKalb County several years ago for roughly $5 million, than sold it to Cousins Properties in August. The city had been working to acquire the Callaway site since 2003. The last remaining DeKalb employees vacated the building in April.
Cousins’ planned mixed-use development for the site includes 329 apartments and a 40,000 square foot, four-story structure, with a ground floor for some retail and the upper three stories for office only. Decatur hasn’t had a new downtown office building since 1991.
For now the construction timeline is vague. In August Cousins received a letter from DeKalb County saying the county sewer system lacks adequate capacity for theirs and a number of other projects. As it stands Cousins will have to pay for both sewer upgrades and a tap fee of approximately $1,700 per unit to connect to the DeKalb County sewer.
