Furniture icon's fate is sealed; Smokestack slated for demolition.

Byline: George Barnes 

GARDNER - The Heywood-Wakefield Co. smokestack will be torn down a week from Monday, barring any new change in plans.

The 190-foot smokestack, the most visible monument to the city's furniture-making past, will be torn down by F.A. Moschetti and Sons construction company, which most recently took down the burned-out remains of one of the former S. Bent Bros. Co. furniture factory buildings.

Shawn Higgins, a representative of Mountain Climber LLC, the company that bought the smokestack and Heywood Place, a 171-apartment and 15-office complex on Lake Street, said the smokestack is coming down for safety reasons. The smokestack has deteriorated to the point where it could be a hazard to people and cars parked in the lot that surrounds it.

The demolition had been scheduled for July 14, but Mr. Higgins gave more time to a group formed by residents who hoped to save the property. He said he has not received a plan for saving the smokestack that he felt would be advantageous to his company and decided it was time to take the chimney down.

Paul DeMeo, a member of the group trying to save the smokestack, said he learned of the date to take it down through a telephone call from a newspaper reporter. He said that before the call, he was still hoping Mountain Climber LLC would accept a plan for saving the smokestack.

"Apparently it fell on deaf ears," he said.

Mr. DeMeo said Michael Tracy, who formed the committee along with him, and Kerry and Ernest Bettez, drew up a business plan to create a nonprofit corporation to assume ownership of the smokestack. The plan was to form the corporation and for Mountain Climber LLC to deed the smokestack

to the corporation, relinquishing both ownership and liability, and then the nonprofit corporation would raise money for the smokestack's upkeep.

The owner, Mr. DeMeo said, would benefit from a large tax break for making a charitable donation to the nonprofit corporation and it would no longer be liable for the smokestack. He said the city would benefit by retaining one of its important landmarks.

"It would be a memorial to all the people who worked in the furniture industry throughout the area," Mr. DeMeo said, adding that it would also honor those who worked in industries that supported the furniture industry.

"I thought it was a great business plan," he said.

Mr. DeMeo said he was still trying to determine if there was anything else his committee could do to save the smokestack.

Heywood-Wakefield Co. was once the largest furniture manufacturer in the world. It closed in the 1970s and two of three factory buildings in the complex on Lake, Central and Pine streets have been converted to housing. The smokestack was built in the 1930s to serve the factory's power plant, which was torn down when the Heywood Place section of the complex was renovated into apartments and offices in the 1980s.