KALAMAZOO, MI - A building restoration crew expects to finish dismantling the top of the old Gibson Guitar Co. smokestack on Kalamazoo's north side by the end of next week.

Bricks from the stack, some of which bear the Gibson name, are being preserved so it can be rebuilt.

The white-lettered brick smokestack is one of the last vestiges here of the iconic Gibson Guitar Co., founded in Kalamazoo, and the 85-foot-tall smokestack bearing its name is a piece of local history. It is located in the Kalamazoo Enterprise Center, a 167,000-square-foot property at 225 Parsons St. that is home to a cluster of businesses.

The three-story portion of the building was the home of Gibson for 82 years before the company relocated to Nashville, Tenn., and in 1984 shut down its guitar production work here.

A crew with Kalamazoo-based Building Restoration Inc. started work on the smokestack about two weeks ago by erecting scaffolding around the structure so it can be dismantled.

The work addresses a concern about the safety of the aging smokestack, which was slated for demolition last January before community members and guitar lovers petitioned for a reprieve.

There were fears that part of the smokestack may fall. It rises about 70 feet from the second-floor rooftop of the Parsons Street building but starts inside the building at its ground-floor level.

"We did an engineering survey a couple of years ago and determined that the top 30 feet is very unstable," said Blair Bates, president of Building Restoration Inc.

Removing the brick tiles on Wednesday he said, "It doesn't take a chipping hammer. You just reach down and lift these tiles off. So we're taking the 30 feet down (from the top) and then we'll come in an do a re-evaluation and determine if we have to take more down or not."

Kalamazoo's guitar-making history continues at the former Gibson factory with Heritage Guitar Co., which was started by some former Gibson guitar makers. As Gibson instruments became one of the main tools of musicians in rock, country, jazz and other modern musical genres in the 1950s and 60s, any number of famous musicians - from the Rolling Stones to Ted Nugent - visited Kalamazoo to buy custom-made guitars and have their instruments repaired.

The Parsons Street building is undergoing a $12 million renovation. Owner PlazaCorp Realty Advisors plans to redevelop the 5-acre site in a mixed-use fashion, renovating 147,000 square feet of the building's 167,000 square feet and demolishing the remainder.

Included in the renovation work are plans for a 2,000-square-foot beer garden, a bar or restaurant, and observation areas to see the smokestack through skylights.

The future of the smokestack, however, remains uncertain, though PlazaCorp has said it hopes to retain it.

"Very soon, there will be a campaign released whereby contributions will be accepted into a fund specifically for the preservation and reconstruction of the smokestack," the owners said in a Sept. 1 news release about plans to dismantle it. "In the meantime, the bricks will be secured, palletized and stored.

"There remain many steps in the redevelopment process and we are very optimistic with the support the project has received and the progress that has been made to date."

Read MLive's special report: 'Gibson, Kalamazoo and a guitar heritage'