Crown-Vantage Paper Mill, Parchment

 I recently discovered an abandoned paper mill in Kalamazoo that I had presumed to be demolished. In fact, the building was still there, and ripe for exploration.

Crown-Vantage was one of many paper companies to go out of business in Kalamazoo, going bankrupt in 2000. The city was even called the 'Paper City' at one point. This is the last mill left of the many paper mills, and is doomed to demolition.

The building hadn't been demolished due to a bald eagle nesting in the property. This was the only reason I was able to explore the site.

Building F complex being renovated after a large fire. Tips on finding the arsonist for $5000

The toxic complex has caught fire many times, and is across the street from a middle-school, which prompted the demolition hearings.

I met a lot of people here, maybe around eleven on this Sunday morning. There were a few homeless, and a lot of other people having fun

I couldn't get enough of this one room. It was filled with light

This was probably the most 'normal' room in the entire building. Except for the eight people hanging out together

Here are some "offices" on site

The view that the office window provided was of the 'Print-O-Department'

A cooling tower or HVAC maybe?

Here was a staircase surrounded by windows and open air

The Waxed-Print-Shop

Someone playing the guitar on the second floor, and I'm not 100% sure why. To each their own

This steel-frame building wasn't as tough as the rest of the factory, there was two collapses

This is the second floor of the Print-O-Department, where ink was made in mass and in labs

The numerous ramps I'd taken lead me down to the first floor, and I ended up in this room

The building was endless

This was some kind of electrical room according to the signs

A pipe and machine mess

The bottom floor was packed with these colossal tile cylinders that could probably fit a car

This area obviously had massive machinery at one point, these pits where they used to sit must've been two stories deep

The crawl space between the machinery and walls was crowded with pipes and electric boxes that made the machines go

There was this lab-esque room in between the two milling buildings, I liked the bending ceiling

Gear containers that once turned heavy machinery

Behind the gears was another crawlspace junk-mess

I was happy to see that this massive rotating barrel hadn't been taken away to scrap yet

One of the rooms in between the two machine buildings caught fire, like much of the Crown Vantage facility, and was now cumulated rusty debris:

At the end was this third story platform with no railing protections to save you from a 20 ft drop, or 60 if you were unlucky enough to stumble into the elevator shaft.

These massive doors were about 10 feet tall, it now became apparent that everything in this complex was oversized for anybody

Some sort of server room, maybe even a cafeteria?

The neighboring locker-room wasn't treated as nicely by visitors.

Here are the two 'machine rooms' they're the skylights with vents on the right and left, separated by a 'canyon' filled with various, small rooms.

Apparently this part of the building was a long-term storage area. The ceilings here were much lower

Pressure measurement? I'm not sure...

There seems to have been a fire here, melting these pipes into the saggy shape they resemble today

This room was massive, four stories tall and tinted green

I kept ascending the main storage building

This was the fifth floor room, the highest climbable point in the factory I think

These huge tanks were for disposing of spent papers or pulp, I think. The deposit hole was maybe 5*5 feet square?

This was just outside, it was likely a railway loading dock

I arrived at the teal colored room, it was loud and crunchy. This is where a lot of paper-making equipment was shipped in and temporarily stored

This parallel room was where acids were stored for the pulp making process. It connected to the vast network of basements, that I never went to explore, because they were void of anything interesting

And I did visit the basement, briefly.

I find these insulated tanks interesting, it might've been a pump-house?

If you weren't here, you wouldn't understand how massive this building was... I say this every time because I still can't understate it.

Time to climb one of the oil tanks, but first I had to get down to the pit

If the site had been abandoned maybe 40 years ago instead of 20, all this metal I climbed would be very unsafe- I think, maybe...

A couple explorers can be spotted summiting the fifth floor of the storage building I'd just explored 15 minutes prior:

All people interested in industry will instantly know what building this is used for

I do not know where these thick, metal grids came from

This is a network of walkways under the boiler, resembling nothing I've ever seen:

My favorite labels, they tell me about asbestos so the red tape doesn't have to

A lot of news articles and people called this place an eyesore, from what I saw, it looked architecturally amazing, but just infrastructurally unsafe for use. Could see it as a cool apartment, shopping-place or office, if it wasn't contaminated.

'Gauge room' it was tucked away in the back of the structure, explaining why it's in pristine condition

The spiral staircase was cut off halfway down, lying sideways. This paper mill offered many firsts.

Detached structure parallel to the boiler building, I presume it may have been linked to importing fuels

Yet another small building that wasn't attached to any other building, this was was a wreck. The roof had caved in on one side too, Crown Vantage easily takes the spot for most pristine apocalyptic ruin

I wandered back to the Print-O-Department, this time on the bottom two floors. They were placed in one large room, as seen:

This particular area was the perfect time capsule for me, back to the 1930's

Waxed Print Shop, from the outside this time:

The Print-O-Department:

That photogenic boiler building, from a different angle:

This was one of my favorite urban explorations, this one gave me time to see a building that wasn't completely looted bare-bones by its owner, or poor locals. I finally got to see a big building with big machines in a big town, this location also will hold the record for having the highest people per square foot of any abandoned place I'd been beforehand.