photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Ottawa Cooperative Association's grain elevator in North Lawrence is pictured on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024.

It’s one of the most massive structures in Douglas County and likely the tallest, looming over North Lawrence like a mountain, but in the past seven years the hulking grain elevator has been largely dormant, put out of commission by persistent leaks and other age-related ills.

That’s about to change. Come next summer, trucks full of corn and soybeans will be rumbling through the neighborhood once again.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Crews patch concrete high up on the Ottawa Cooperative Association’s grain elevator in North Lawrence on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024.

Commuters heading north across the Kansas River may have noticed antlike crews working high up on the structure, which is owned by the Ottawa Cooperative Association, installing a new roof and patching exterior cracks on the gigantic bins. Concrete work has also been going on inside, with new bin liners being poured. And millwrights will soon be at work installing the heavy machinery that gets grain into the bins.

Clark Wenger, the co-op’s president who’s been with the company for about 26 years, said the work began about three years ago, when the company was exploring what to do with the aging structure that had already been out of commission for three or four years at that point because of leaks.

“That created a huge problem because you can’t keep grain in condition if you can’t keep the water out,” said Wenger, who estimates the elevator dates to the 1950s.

One option was to abandon the site altogether, but ultimately the co-op determined “it was probably best if we could try and bring it back to life,” Wenger said.

Three contractors looked at the site and estimated that the required work was less substantial than it has actually turned out to be — a reality commonly faced by anyone remodeling, but especially in the COVID years when construction costs shot up.

“We thought we would have it available a couple of years ago,” Wenger said. “We’ve had some really good harvests the last two years, and it hasn’t been done because we ran into additional items that had to be accomplished before we could use the facility.”

But now, he says, they are within months of completion, with the approximately 150-foot-tall bins expected to accommodate next summer’s harvest.

As to how much money the renovations at the North Lawrence elevator set the co-op back, Wenger said, “I’d rather stay away from that — a lot more money than I anticipated, like twice what we originally thought.”

But he’s relieved to soon have the site back in business — becoming an active player in the co-op’s trio of grain elevators in Douglas County, the others being at Midland Junction and near 19th Street and Haskell Avenue. The renovation will provide 700,000 bushels of storage that the co-op had been losing out on when the elevator was unusable, he said, space that’s “greatly needed” for farmers, who have otherwise had to take their corn and soybeans elsewhere.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Ottawa Cooperative Association’s grain elevator in North Lawrence is pictured on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024.