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A view of the Mecklenburg demolition site before the remains of the building were knocked down. A November fire had left the structure roofless and minus portions of some walls.

It was demolition day for a landmark

MECKLENBURG, June 17 -- A small field mouse scurried about from rock to bush to mound of mud -- feinting in the direction of the building and then running from it, time and again.

The building might have been his home, or perhaps his playground.

Now -- on Wednesday, June 16 -- it was fast becoming rubble.

The building was the old Mecklenburg hotel -- a building, gutted by fire last November, that had stood vacant for decades before the blaze, and had stood stark and incomplete since. It was time for its final indignity: demolition of its standing walls, with the remains pushed into a large pit.

The pit was dug Wednesday morning by Cookies Construction of Odessa, with business owner Tom Cook manning the main piece of equipment, a tracked excavator. An employee operated a bulldozer, pushing into the pit any debris Cook was knocking down.

The two-story wood-frame building had been a hotel once, many years ago, said a couple of local residents at the scene to watch the demolition. And it later served as a nursing home and a rooming house -- and for a time as a bar. But it was empty for decades -- "since I was a kid, and long before that," said one of the observers, a 40-something man, at the scene Wednesday morning.

Located at the corner of Rt. 79 and the Turnpike Road in the center of Mecklenburg, it had burned one day in early November (see photo). A leaf fire nearby might have triggered the blaze, officials suggested at the time.

The structure was owned by Michael Conover, who lives up the road in Mecklenburg. He owns several properties in the community. And it was he, said Town of Hector Code Enforcement Officer Charles A. Langenfeld, who was paying for the demolition. The building was not insured.

Firefighters from seven departments had responded to the November blaze; but on Wednesday, the only activity was Cook's equipment, digging, pushing, knocking down and pushing some more.

While much of the structure was being pushed into the pit, some was also being jammed downward, into the building's basement, filling it up. Once the materials were bulldozed, the mounds of dirt dug earlier by Cook would be used to cover the site.

If another building is constructed there, said Langenfeld, it will have to be on a slab erected above the loose materials buried Wednesday. Nobody at the scene had heard of any such plans, though.

And as the morning wound down, and the last of debris recognizable as part of a structure was knocked down, observers started leaving. But not the mouse. He was last seen darting into a tuft of weeds not far from where a set of concrete steps -- now gone -- had sat minutes before.

His home -- or his playground -- was a memory.

And a Mecklenburg landmark was gone.

Photos in text:

Top: Excavator claws (upper left) prepare to push over a section of wall that contained a door.

Middle: The scene of the fire in November. (Photo by Katie Marks)

Bottom: A heavy set of stairs is tossed about. It ended up moments later in the pit, to the left of the pictured area.

Cookies Construction starts to knock down a wall, the debris landing in the pit.

Two walls of the old building go tumbling down.

A porch falls in on the building, helped along by Cookies Construction demolition equipment.