County Stadium will live on at a baseball park in Two Rivers, which has purchased the stadium's outfield lighting. The stadium's infield dirt will be moved to Miller Park. Furthermore, countless local construction projects will use the stadium's recycled steel, bricks, copper and aluminum. The stadium's extensive recycling program has ensured that almost all of the material -- from the foul ball poles to sheet metal -- will be reused, instead of heading to the Dumpster. By the time the stadium is totally demolished this spring, some 2,000 truckloads of recyclable materials will have been removed from the site.

30,000 tons of County Stadium concrete will be crushed and used as infill at the new Miller Park site. If the concrete were hauled to a landfill, it would cost $20 per ton, or $600,000. "If we didn't recycle on site, we'd have to import the materials, and that would cost a lot of money," said Robert Peschel, an engineer with Sigma Environmental Services Inc. The stadium district retained the Oak Creek firm as its demolition consultant. In all, recycling will save about $1.2 million. The stadium district budgeted $2 million for the demolition, but will only pay $800,000.

Two memorabilia auctions were successful in selling a plethora of the old stadium's unique and trivial items. Urinals, neon signs, lockers and bricks were among the mix.

Sigma Environmental Services and the general demolition contractor, Midwest Rail & Dismantling Inc. of Milwaukee, were assigned to dismantle the stadium with as little landfill waste as possible. Most of the office furniture was donated to Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin, Peschel said. Local recycling companies claimed some 2,000 tons of brick for use as infill, and 7,000 tons of structural steel will be sent to a foundry in Waupaca to be recycled. Miller Compressing Co., a Milwaukee-based scrap metal company, plans to buy several thousand tons of steel from metal beams, siding and other structures at County Stadium, said Jim Brigel, director of marketing and sales for Miller Compressing.

"We won't know how much steel there will be until the stadium is completely down, but we will take as much of it as we can get," Brigel said. The steel will be divided into smaller pieces and then sold to steel mills and foundries in the Midwest. It's possible that pieces of County Stadium will someday be used to make cars or fences, he said.

Officials from Soldier Field toured County Stadium Jan. 18 to learn recycling tips they can take back to Chicago when the Chicago Bears and the city of Chicago begin their major renovation project.

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Statistics

30,000 tons of concrete will be used as fill for area around Miller Park.
7,000 tons of steel will go to a steel mill.
Light bulbs will be recycled into fiberglass
Up to 150,000 bricks were sold for construction projects around the country.
Field playing lights were sold to a stadium in Two Rivers.
Foul poles will be used in a Little League field near Miller Park.
5% of material will be dumped in landfills.