Here's a tip on how to find when/where old-town demolition sites will occur :

Tom_in_CA

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Hey gang : During decades of md'ing, I've had the good luck to stumble on to various oldtown demolition sites. Like noticing in a newspaper article where something is slated to be torn down. Or a city near me is slated to have all their downtown sidewalks replaced, etc...

Another way to find where tractors may be moving oldtown dirt, is to do google news key word searches. With word combinations like "historic + demolition" or "park + turf + replace", and so forth. And you can even restrict the hits to be only newspapers for your state. But this can be tedious. Since you get pages and pages of hits that mean nothing.

But in the last couple of years, I've been utilizing a superior way to keep abreast of all such projects slated to occur . First, a little background :

Whenever public money is spent (schools, parks, roads, sidewalks, govt. buildings, etc...), there is a requirement that it go out to open bid. To ensure no favoritism. Eg.: Unscrupulous bureaucrats who might steer jobs to their cousin or friend for kickbacks, etc.... And ensure competition of bidders, so as to theoretically get the best value for tax-payer dollars. In the old days (pre internet), this was accomplished via publication of "Request for proposals" in the classified sections of newspapers. You know .... those tteennssyy fine print legal section stuff in the back of newspapers that no one ever read. :roll:

But this was tedious, for construction companies to have to get multiple subscriptions to multiple papers from around their part of the state. And then tedious in that if you wanted to bid, you'd need to see the full plans/blueprints, which were available only by showing up at city or county hall in whatever location/jurisdiction that was in.

So general contractors pooled together, back in the 1950s, to create "co-ops" of sorts. Like farmer co-ops where all the various entities (city, county, state & fed) bids would all be in a single publication. And all the blueprints for these various projects would be housed under a single roof to physically go see the plans, get copies, etc...

Now, in the internet age, these builders exchanges can now do their work via 'puters and subscriptions. And what used to be county-by-county (or tri-county by tri-county) is now being consolidated into entire states. As these yesteryear builders exchanges merge into singular entities.

There's been a few "copycat" attempts by pop-up companies to attempt something nationwide. Don't subscribe to those. Instead: Find out who is the old-school ones that used to be brick & mortar, and are now subscription for their members. I've found that the new nationwide ones don't get all the projects for each locale. Vs the old-school companies that were just on perpetual retainer , with all the public works entities of their areas.

As an example, here the one for my area : http://www.ccbabuilds.com/

The annual subscription costs range from $100 to $500 ish. Depending on perks that you subscribe to get. Example, if you just want the bids for your tri-county area, versus if you want state wide, etc.... Or if you need multiple passwords (for multiple engineers) versus a single PW, etc...

Once you sign up, you can search their data bases with key word searches like "turf", or "demolish" or "demolition", or "sidewalk" or "bleachers", etc.... Our particular local builders exchange sends a daily email with any new projects that have come up for bid, state-wide, county-by-county. I just do "Ctrl F" (control find) and search the email for the various key words.

Occasionally you'll find a gem. Like some small burg within striking distance of you that is going to re-do their oldtown walks. Or a park that's slated to get artificial turf installed. Or tear down a historic section. Or re-do their bleachers at an old stadium that was planted on terra-firma, etc....

There's not many private sector job/bid listings on these, since those aren't required to have competitive bidding. But since parks and schools are public dollars, there tends to be every single park or school or sidewalk project on there (how convenient) :)

Naturally, this assumes that you're not timid about doing sidewalk demo's or old town demo's. That might (gasp) require you to step over yellow tape after 5pm. But assuming you're of that caliber: This can be a good way to stumble on to such projects.
 
Wow, great info and thanks for taking time to share. Something like this could be a game changer for folks in more of a metro area. I'd love to find something like this for tearouts.

Add a yellow safety vest safety glasses and a hard hat and your in like Flynn. If you really want to be left alone put OSHA on the back, lol.
 
that's pretty good stuff Tom !!
way to think outside the box.

Right?!!!? Tom!!!! deep thinking focused Hunting!!

"The baleful glowing monitor, a perfect Hunters Moon...Wandering website wastelands like a digital Daniel Boone!" "The keyboard is my trusty steed, my compass is a mouse, searching the Globe by satellite from the comfort of my house!"

Damn! You really threw out some pearls before us swine here for some strange reason! I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
 
Tom, thanks for sharing! Just yesterday morning on my way to work I pulled over in front of the old court house as they tore the sidewalk area out at the base of the main steps, I stepped over the yellow tape and detected the small area at 5:30 am. Didn’t find a thing but it’s a start! Also at another park I laid down and shimmied under a temporary construction fence to detect a turf tear out and found some buffs, wheats, token, old bottle, and a cool skeleton key. Nobody around batted an eye either time.

I’m going to look into what you wrote and see what I can find. Hard to spend $100, BUT a good use for the clad finds!

Appreciated,
Jeff
 
The way this evolved for me, was that back in the late 1980s, I was at an in-laws house in San Jose, CA. An hour or so north of where I live. This was pre-internet era. And just happened to glance at a San Jose Mercury newspaper local section. And there was a little blurb about an old town building being demolished.

Having had a little background, by then, about how old town demolitions can go good, I took the drive to old town there. Saw the project was then down to sidewalk terra firma level. Got in (that's what cat-keys are made for after all) and found several seated dimes, tokens, etc... !

It occurred to me : "Wow, I would never have known about this, if it hadn't been for the stroke of luck to just happen chance see that news article !" So I began to scour several newspapers daily, for years thereafter, hoping to spot some slated work stuff. Very tedious.

Then came the era of the internet in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. I would hop on google news every week or so, go through all the "options" to choose newspapers from just my state. Then enter in varieties of key words. Like "demolish" + "historic". But this was very tedious, as there's scores of meaningless hits (Eg.: "Saints demolish Giants in historic game", blah blah )

That evolved to this current method. Costs a little, but it's pretty thorough.
 
.... as they tore the sidewalk area out at the base of the main steps ....


Jeff, I have the statewide (entire CA) subscription. And whenever I see something out of my striking range (I'm 1 hr. south of San Jose), I post the tip/lead on the kinzli forum. Check there. Because I have posted leads for your part of CA before. Keep an eye on that forum.
 
Good tip Tom!
I look at the local gov sites here when they mention which parks are getting how much money this year for renovation and keep it in mind.
 
Jeff, I have the statewide (entire CA) subscription. And whenever I see something out of my striking range (I'm 1 hr. south of San Jose), I post the tip/lead on the kinzli forum. Check there. Because I have posted leads for your part of CA before. Keep an eye on that forum.

Will do Tom, thanks again.
 
Another example of necessity being the mother of invention...schools and parks are DONE so aside from door knocking,what do you do? A dilemma shared by many,acted upon by the the crafty few...
Nice bean usage there Tom.
 
That's one heck of a research strategy, great thinking!

Wow, I don't think I have seen "great thinking" and Tom in the same conversation! :p

Anyways, Tom is the master and best Cali Detecting Detective I know. He is tenacious when it comes to finding old sites!

By the way Tom, still waiting for the back rub you promised after I gave you one!

Greg
 
Permission

These are great tips, thanks for sharing.

Where do you go for permission to hunt these areas?

I tried something similar, they tore up an old field next to a school near me to prepare to build a new school. Right after the field was torn up, I contacted the school superintendent asking for permission to detect the dirt. While he was intrigued, ultimately he told me no because of the risk of being on a construction site and liability, etc.

I was bummed.
 
.... Where do you go for permission to hunt these areas?.....


Uh ... in this litigious age we live in: You can ask till you're blue in the face, and guess what the answer will be ? :roll:

I started in an era (1970s) when there was no fences around demolition sites (well, a few cones and some orange ribbon perhaps). And nowadays, heck, even school yards have fences around them. As I alluded to in my opening post : This assumes you're of the caliber to (gasp) step over a ribbon, or wait till after 5pm, or get a cat key off of ebay, etc....

This is a multi-faceted concept anyhow. Because in the context of my post (schools, parks, sidewalks), are all examples of public property. So we're not even talking about private property, in the first place. But sure: Even public property can be closed (during construction, etc...). Sure. I get that. And you can knock yourself silly trying to talk to city council or whatever. But as you can guess .... guess what the answer will be ? This is like asking "Can I jaywalk please?"

When it comes to sidewalk demolitions (for instance) , I just go. I'm sure there's orange cones and "sidewalk closed" signs. But after 5pm, when the workers have gone home for the day, just go.

I realize this sidewalks example doesn't answer the more hardcore scenarios of something like: Bleacher demolitions, building demolitions, park scrapes, etc..... If you or anyone wants commentary and examples on that, I will extend the post to methods and examples (from personal experience) on those type things.
 
Great info... Something I have done around my town. My biggest disappointment was a 1895 school that was expanding it classrooms and was denied by the school days before the dig, denied by the construction company and denied by a security guard that found me attempting to get into the grounds at 0500. Couldn't even appeal to the "history" that was going to be lost because of the dig.

Opportunity lost and I was (and still am) highly disappointed.
 
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