Environmental Demolition Group is proud to be a part of the Greater Cincinnati community. Our roots here run deep, as several of our staff members grew up in this area. We’ve seen our beautiful city transform into a place we want to thrive in. Just look at some of our projects to see how we’ve helped transform Cincinnati landmarks, buildings, and schools.
We love the work we do, and we’ve been working in the area for 20 years. We’re proud to be a top select demolition company in Cincinnati.
Longevity
Owner and president Shawn McGinness studied the industry for 15 years before establishing Environmental Demolition Group in 2004. Joe Hummel, the director of EDG, came on in 2013 after spending several years with Shawn at their previous company. Both men bring loads of experience from managing thousands of projects collectively.
Shawn has more than three decades of industry experience, and he anchors our core group of 35 employees with more than a century of combined experience in the industry among our project managers.
Our team has lived in Greater Cincinnati for most of our careers, if not longer. We are also a family-oriented company. Ryan McGinness began with our team shortly after graduating from the University of Kentucky in 2020, and he specializes in project development and estimating.
Jeff Bryars started with our team in November 2007. He takes the lead in business development at our firm.
Varied and Successful Projects
Both Shawn and Joe have seen it all in their decades in the industry.
Among our top projects include:
The beautiful Jeweler’s Exchange Building in downtown Cincinnati sat vacant for 50 years, from the early 1970s to the early 2020s. We helped rehabilitate the high-rise building into a glittering jewel and downtown destination. It’s now an award-winning LEED Silver project where we kept as many of the historical attributes of the building as possible.
We helped renovate an old auto parts warehouse in Dayton, Ohio, into a mixed-use space. As of 2022, the Mendelson’s Building was our largest project to date at 500,000 square feet. It now houses apartments and retail areas.
Our team helped demolish two older school buildings into a verdant green space in Lebanon, Ohio. The district no longer needed the buildings, so they were demolished. However, the site needed hazardous waste disposal and cleanup for lead and asbestos.
We performed an environmental cleanup of an old General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. The sprawling property encompassed a total of 48 million square feet, counting the parking lot. The plant was operational from 1919 to 2008.
Our team handled select demolition for the Union Trust Building in downtown Cincinnati ahead of a $50 million rehab project. It became a new destination hotel for one of the top hospitality chains in the world. The high-rise was dedicated in 1901, and we were proud to help retain the historical elements while modernizing many of the building structures.
We performed select demolition on the historic Fayette County Courthouse in downtown Lexington, Kentucky. The iconic building was turned into a modern mixed-used space rather than a government building.
Locations of our projects have included buildings in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states:
- Ohio
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Indiana
- Wisconsin
- Iowa
- Virginia
Our team takes on 150 to 200 projects a year, mostly in our core states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. However, we hold licenses in 11 states.
“We travel, and we can perform selective demolition and environmental cleanup in any building type, so we work across industries. In the span of a week, we may work on a military base, a high school, and downtown commercial building, and a power plant,” says Joe Hummel.
High Levels of Collaboration
Our company recognizes the high and often complicated level of coordination needed across various trades and consultants. We discuss projects with engineers, excavators, electricians, plumbers, general contractors, developers, architects, tradespeople, subcontractors, superintendents, and project managers, among many others.
“Our role really is to illuminate the unknown and find a way to deal with it,” Joe says.
Many environmental hazards are unseen and unknown to property owners and even developers once they begin to plan for a project. Owners may not know there are contaminants in floors, pipes, ceilings, walls, window frames, and other structures. Lead can be found in paint and glazed tiles. Asbestos can be found in light fixtures, adhesives, and even wiring. PCBs and lead can contaminate soil.
Even when developers and owners go into panic mode when a negative report comes back, our team doesn’t flinch. We always remain calm as we solve problems on each of our unique projects. We challenge ourselves to think outside the box to deliver what needs to be done on a site that must preserve the history, sanctity, and load-bearing capacity of buildings while following federal and state regulations.
One such problem occurred in the former School for Creative Performing Arts building in Downtown Cincinnati. Originally built in 1855, we needed to remove two swimming pools, one of which was on the fifth floor, while preserving the load-bearing walls. One solution was to shore up the area with a concrete floor for
the loft apartments. Now, the historic building has new life as gorgeous lofts with hardwood floors, tall ceilings, and plenty of space for residents.
Talk to a Top Selective Demolition Company in Cincinnati
Our team specializes in select demolition waste disposal, including lead abatement, in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region.
Contact us or call 859-363-4863 to learn more about what we can do for your building renovation or site remediation project. We’re happy to help in any way we can.
