Adamo Group began demolishing blighted and abandoned homes in July as part of the City’s six-year long blight blitz. Just four months later, Adamo has removed nearly 800 blighted structures – leading the pack at 38%. Adamo is utilizing 325 excavators to level the structures and load the debris into trucks, and bulldozers for backfilling and grading. Six to eight crews, consisting of two to three workers per crew, are operating six days per week, 10 hours per day to meet the project’s aggressive timeline. Additional Section 3 qualified employees and Detroit residents were hired to perform the extra work. The project has met with a few challenges along the way, including torrential downpours, squatters, and obtaining utility disconnections. The Detroit Police Department has been a great help in assisting with squatters, and the Detroit Land Bank Authority has been working closely with DTE to obtain utility shut-off clearance in batches. This in turn has enabled Adamo to obtain demolition permits in batches, keeping the project on schedule. The logistics of trucking high volumes of debris to landfills, including a shortage of trucks and the shutdown of I-96, posed additional challenges. New routes to landfills had to be taken, consuming valuable time. Due to Adamo’s long-standing relationships with the landfill companies, facilities stayed open later to accommodate the project’s objectives. Interaction from the community throughout the project has been very positive overall. During the due diligence stage it was common for residents to approach crews and thank them for their work and for helping to improve the image of their neighborhoods. One resident wrote a letter to the Mayor, applauding Adamo for its quick emergency work on a structure that was in danger of falling on her home. With phase I of the blight blitz wrapping up, Adamo crews are making final grades and site restorations to parcels where hundreds of blighted homes stood just weeks ago.
