Company Seeks Permit to Build Auto Shredder

(At press time the Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously recommended approval of the petition. Click on the sidebar for a press report from the meeting )

Randy’s Recycling, a scrap metal recycling firm headquartered in Eau Claire, Mich., has applied to receive a conditional-use permit to install an auto shredder at its Gertrude Street metal recycling plant in South Bend, Ind. The company will be going before the city’s Area Board of Zoning Appeals this month in hopes of receiving approval for the shredder.

Earlier this year Randy’s Recycling sought to install an auto shredder at its facility in Benton Township, Ill. However, the company’s efforts met resistance from residents and the local government, and Randy’s Recycling rescinded its request at that location.

Recognizing the bias many residents have against an auto shredder installation in their city, Randy Schlipp, owner of Randy’s Recycling, says the company has a significant amount of work ahead of it to receive approval by the county’s board. Even before the first hearing on the project, scheduled for Aug. 4, Schlipp says there has been significant opposition to the plan, with signs having been placed around the site protesting the proposed auto shredder.

Schlipp says his company needs to overcome the lingering bitterness over a mega shredder that generated tremendous controversy in nearby Elkhart, Ind. That auto shredder, built in a residential neighborhood, was the subject of numerous complaints from neighbors. Eventually, the shredder was closed.

“The difference between ours and theirs,” he says, referring to the Elkhart mega shredder, “is that theirs was the biggest (shredder) in the world.”

By comparison, he says, the 80/104 shredder proposed for Gertrude Street Metal Recycling, would be less than half the size of the Elkhart shredder and capable of processing between 200 to 300 automobiles per day.

Also, Schlipp says that the Elkhart mega shredder was only 75 feet from homes, while the proposed shredder in South Bend would be more than a quarter mile away from the closest resident, helping to mitigate noise or dust problems.

Randy’s Recycling plans to construct a 10-foot acoustical fence along the north and west sides of the property and an acoustical curtain around the shredder itself to muffle the sound produced by the machine, according to one press report.

Schlipp says the installation of the shredder would result in an additional 30 full-time jobs, plus benefits, at Gertrude Street within two years.

Total investment at the site would be about $5 million, he says, significantly increasing the property value.

To further allay neighbors’ concerns, Schlipp says he is putting together a “field trip” for interested parties to a shredder similar to the one his company is hoping to install.

Schlipp also has committed to financing necessary upgrades to accommodate additional truck traffic on surrounding roads, which the company estimates at between 15 and 20 trucks per day.