New owner demolishing former Hawkins Mill

The new owner of a recognizable structure at Kansas Expressway and College Street is demolishing the roughly 75-year-old building.

The sizable silver building at 1500 W. College St. was the longtime home of feed milling operation Hawkins Mill until the early 2000s, when former building owner James Hawkins retired. It has since housed Aqua Terra and George & Joann’s Antique Mall, said Jacob Reynolds of Murney Associates, Realtors, who most recently listed the property at $175,000 for his uncle Hawkins.

Nick Newman of Newman Enterprises LLC bought the building in the fall for an undisclosed price. Demolition work began around Dec. 30, and he expects the facility to be fully torn down by the end of the first quarter, pending site work that includes examination of flooding at the property and remediation work. Amish contractors are performing much of the demolition and are buying the wood for reuse.

Newman is investing around $200,000 in demolition and site work but hasn’t yet decided what to do with the 1-acre property.

“More than anything, it’s about the return on investment. I don’t know what the best use is entirely at this point,” said Newman, who also owns Cherokee Firearms on North National Avenue.

The roughly 23,000-square-foot facility, which comprises the larger silver building and a smaller storage area, was built around 1940. It originally functioned as a flour mill until being converted to a feed mill in the 1960s, according to MillPictures.com.