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Wood Excavated From Old Chrysler Site In Twinsburg Finds New Life

An excavator tears up old Chrysler site in Twinsburg (pic: Brian Bull); a Winking Lizard table (pic: flickr.com's toby)
An excavator tears up old Chrysler site in Twinsburg (pic: Brian Bull); a Winking Lizard table (pic: flickr.com's toby)

(NOTE: An earlier version of this story listed the wrong organization. It is actually Reclaimed Cleveland that is repurposing the wood salvaged from the former stamping site. The story has been updated to reflect the correction. We apologize for the error.)

While the old Chrysler stamping plant in Twinsburg is now a rubble-strewn memory, parts of it will live on in local bars, and even the new bulk warehouse going up on the site.

Terry Coyne of the commercial real estate firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank says developers have removed "acres" of pecan wood from the old Chrysler site, including from underneath where the old stamping presses used to sit.

Pecan wood is durable and resilient, ideal for sustained, high-impact use.

Coyne says they gave it all to Reclaimed Cleveland, a company that specializes in reclaiming wood and repurposing it in new construction and furniture.

“And they are using it now in Winking Lizard bars," says Coyne. "People are buying it and making tables. So the warehouse in the office area, we’re going to have either tables made of pecan wood, or the wood as you walk into the foyer, we’re going to make sure that there are pieces of the property that go into the spec building just kind of as a remembrance of what was once there.”

The Chrysler stamping plant in Twinsburg operated for more than half a century before it closed in 2010 as part of the company’s bankruptcy reorganization.