Family owned · Union · MBE & DBE · Chicago

First trade in.
Clean site out.

Structural and interior demolition across Chicagoland — sequenced, permitted and hauled by one crew, so the trades behind us start on the day you promised them.

  • Family owned · 30+ years
  • Union — Locals 150 & 731
  • Self-performed hauling
  • MBE & DBE certified
  • Licensed, bonded & insured

What we self-perform

Six scopes, one contract, one crew on site.

01

Structural Demolition

Full teardowns of masonry, steel and timber structures — warehouses, mills, commercial blocks and residential frames, down to grade.

02

Interior & Selective

Strip-outs and surgical removals in occupied and adjacent-occupied buildings, with the structure, MEP risers and egress you need left standing.

03

Concrete & Foundations

Slabs, footings, foundation walls, retaining walls, silos and below-grade vaults — broken, processed and loaded out.

04

Site Clearing

Lot clearing, paving and curb removal, grubbing and rough grade so the next contractor arrives to a pad, not a pile.

05

Debris Hauling & Recycling

Our own tri-axles and transfer relationships. Concrete, steel and clean wood diverted, with weight tickets to close out your recycling compliance.

06

Emergency Response

Fire, collapse and storm damage. Make-safe, shoring coordination and controlled removal on a same-week mobilization.

Why GCs keep us on the bid list

Demolition either protects the schedule or eats it.

Three things decide which one you get. We control all three in-house.

Debris

We haul our own

Debris leaves on our trucks, on our schedule. No broker, no waiting on a roll-off that never showed, no idle excavator burning a day of your float.

Permits

We pull the paper

Demolition permits, utility disconnects, water shut-offs and dust-control plans handled before mobilization — not discovered during it.

Accountability

The bidder runs the job

The person who walked your site and priced it is the person on the phone at 7 a.m. That does not change after award.

Bidding a Chicago project?

Send us the plans. We’ll walk it this week.

Scope, schedule and a hard number back — typically within five business days of the walkthrough.

Invite us to bid

Projects

Chicago & Cook County
PROJECT 01 Completed Emergency

Fire-damaged multi-unit dwelling

Awarded by the City of Chicago as an emergency demolition. A severely fire-damaged multi-unit single-family dwelling on a zero-lot-line parcel, with occupied buildings standing on both property lines and a detached frame garage at the alley. LeeWay self-performed all three scopes — demolition, excavation, and trucking & hauling. Mobilized Monday. Graded lot delivered Thursday.

ClientCity of Chicago
TypeEmergency demolition
StructureMulti-unit dwelling, fire damaged
Self-performedDemolition · Excavation · Hauling
Duration4 working days
CompletedJuly 23, 2026

Monday to Thursday

Standing structure to graded lot, in four days.

01 · Pre-demolition

The structure as found — fire damaged, boarded, vacant and overgrown, with occupied greystones tight against both property lines.

02 · Rear structure

A detached frame garage at the alley, included in the scope and removed along with the main building.

03 · Take-down

Controlled removal from the alley side with continuous processing. Chicago common brick hand-sorted and palletized on site for reuse instead of going out as debris.

04 · Foundation & load-out

Basement and foundation walls broken out and loaded from inside the footprint, with the neighboring party-wall conditions left standing and protected.

05 · Backfill

Void backfilled and compacted after the last load left the site on LeeWay trucks. No stockpile, no second mobilization.

06 · Delivered

Rough-graded parcel, fence line restored, alley clear. Four working days from mobilization to final condition.

Conditions on this job

Why the City called it an emergency.

Award

Emergency mobilization

Emergency demolition orders do not wait on a bid cycle. We fenced, permitted and had iron on the ground inside the same week the order came down.

Structure

Fire-compromised framing

Floor systems and roof framing had already failed. The take-down was sequenced from the top so the structure came down inside its own footprint rather than toward the neighbors.

Site

Occupied on both sides

Zero lot line, occupied residences left and right. Party-wall conditions were protected in place and the adjacent structures came through untouched.

Salvage

Brick palletized, not landfilled

Chicago common brick was hand-sorted and banded on pallets for reuse. Less weight on the tickets, less material to the transfer station, and a salvage credit back on the job.

Scope

All three trades in-house

Demolition, excavation and hauling ran on LeeWay crews and LeeWay trucks. Nothing on this schedule was waiting on a broker to send a truck.

Result

Four working days

Monday, July 20 to Thursday, July 23 — standing fire-damaged structure to a graded, closed-out parcel.

Emergency work

Something needs to come down this week?

Emergency and fire-damage response, 24/7. Call and we will be on the site today.

(224) 330-8556

About Us

Family owned · 4709 W. Kinzie St. · Chicago

Who we are

Family owned. Union built. Thirty years in.

LeeWay Wrecking Inc. is a family-owned demolition contractor operating out of 4709 W. Kinzie St. in Chicago’s Kinzie Industrial Corridor, with more than thirty years of demolition, excavation, and trucking and hauling experience behind us.

We are a union company in good standing with Operating Engineers Local 150 and Excavators’ Union Local 731, and we are certified as both a Minority Business Enterprise and a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. That combination puts LeeWay on bid lists most demolition subs cannot get on — and it puts journeyman-qualified operators and laborers on your site.

Three decades in, we still own our equipment and employ our operators. When you award a scope to LeeWay, that scope is performed by LeeWay — not passed to a second-tier sub with a different safety culture and a different phone number.

That matters most on the schedule. Demolition is the first trade on site and the one every other trade is waiting on. Our whole operation — wrecking, excavation, and our own trucks — is built around handing off a clean, graded, permitted pad on the date in the contract.

Standing & certifications

OwnershipFamily owned

Independently held and family operated. The owners are on the job, not behind a holding company.

Experience30+ years

Demolition, excavation, and trucking & hauling — three scopes we have self-performed across Chicago for three decades.

UnionLocal 150

Good standing with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150. Journeyman operators on every machine.

UnionLocal 731

Good standing with Excavators’ Union Local 731. Trained laborers, ready for prevailing-wage and PLA work.

CertificationMBE

Certified Minority Business Enterprise — participation credit toward your project’s diversity goals.

CertificationDBE

Certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise — eligible on federally assisted and IDOT-funded contracts.

Contractor License No. TGC076619 · Certificates, letters of good standing, W-9, COI and bonding capacity available on request.

How a LeeWay job runs

Walkthrough to final sweep.

Step 01

Site walk

We walk the structure with you, flag hazardous materials for abatement, and identify salvage, utilities and adjacent-property exposure before anything is priced.

Step 02

Scope & number

A line-item proposal: what comes down, what stays, what leaves the site, what it costs and how many working days it takes.

Step 03

Permits & disconnects

Demolition permit, utility disconnect confirmations, water and sewer capping, dust-control and rodent-abatement plans filed and cleared.

Step 04

Mobilize

Fencing, protection of adjacent structures, water on site for dust suppression, and the machine that fits the building — not just the machine that was free.

Step 05

Take-down & load-out

Controlled removal with continuous processing and hauling, so material never stockpiles past what the site can hold.

Step 06

Closeout

Rough grade, final sweep, weight tickets, diversion percentages and permit sign-off delivered as one package.

Safety

Nobody gets hurt taking down a building.

Daily pre-task planning, OSHA-trained supervision on every site, documented equipment inspections, and engineered take-down sequencing on any structure with adjacent exposure. Our EMR is [ 0.00 ].

Equipment

Owned, maintained, and on our yard.

High-reach and standard excavators with shears, pulverizers and grapples; skid steers; loaders; water trucks for dust suppression; and a tri-axle dump fleet for continuous load-out.

Where we work

Chicago and the collar counties.

All 77 Chicago community areas plus Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane and Will. Union standing plus MBE and DBE certification make us bid-eligible on City of Chicago, Cook County, IDOT and federally assisted work.

Want the prequal package?

W-9, certificate of insurance, bonding capacity letter, MBE and DBE certificates, union letters of good standing, EMR and safety manual — sent same day.

Request prequal

Leadership

Owner-operated

Two people run this company, and both of them answer their phone. There is no layer between the estimate and the excavator.

WL On site · structural take-down, Chicago

William Lee

Owner & President

Founder and owner of LeeWay Wrecking Inc. and LeeWay Enterprise LLC. Will has spent more than forty years in demolition, thirty-two of them as an owner of LeeWay.

He came up in the trade as a kid, working for his grandfather’s company, and he never left the field. He still runs the yard, the equipment and the crews — if a structure is coming down, he has walked it.

In demolition40+ years
Owner at LeeWay32 years
Trade lineageThird generation
DM Operations · estimating through closeout

Davonte Mahomes

Partner / Chief Operating Officer

Davonte owns the day-to-day: estimating and bid strategy, project scheduling, crew and equipment allocation, union labor coordination with Locals 150 and 731, safety and OSHA compliance, permitting and certification renewals, subcontractor and vendor management, and billing through final closeout. He is the first call on a bid and the point of contact until the site is swept.

He has spent his entire life around construction, including summers working for LeeWay Wrecking. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied business and business operations and earned a varsity letter for the Michigan wrestling team.

What that buys you: white-glove service, communication you never have to chase, and fresh legs on a trade that runs on stamina.

In constructionLifelong
EducationMichigan, business
AthleticsVarsity letterman

Talk to the people who run the job.

No call center, no gatekeeper. Reach either of us directly.

Contact us

Contact Us

Invitations to bid welcome

Invitation to bid

Send us the job.

Plans and specs: email the link or attachment to dm@leewaywrecking.com. Large files welcome — send a Dropbox, Box or WeTransfer link.