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GREENSBORO -- Passers-by eyed the backhoe as it snatched up a pile of debris just off East Bragg and Arlington streets Thursday.

A pair of white brick columns and a set of cement stairs stood nearby — the leftovers of what was, until this week, a house.

In the next three months, the house and nine other buildings will be crushed by D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. and hauled away as part of the city's $11 million South Elm Street revitalization project.

By year's end, the city will search for a developer to transform the 10 acres south of Lee Street into a residential, commercial and office complex. The demolition will pave the way for an Environmental Protection Agency-funded cleanup that will prepare the site for redevelopment.

"We are just excited about it," said Nettie Coad, chairwoman of the Greensboro Redevelopment Commission.

The city started looking at the area five years ago, after the Greensboro Grasshoppers decided not to build the new baseball stadium there.

Just blocks from the heart of downtown, the landscape is dotted with mostly abandoned and crumbling commercial buildings, such as the former Tri-City Seafood. The ground underneath is polluted with petroleum-based products, city-hired investigators found.

"It's mostly what you would expect to find in old industrial sites like this," said Dan Curry, Greensboro's deputy director of Housing and Community Development.

But Greensboro leaders hope they can revitalize this blighted gateway to the city center.

"The vision for it really is to be a progressive development that we hope would provide opportunities ... that are greatly needed for the area," Coad said.

The demolition, which started this week, is the most recent step toward preparing the site for the city's vision.

The city relocated 10 businesses and spent $3 million to buy up land for the project, Curry said.

The city is working on cleanup plans that will make the land fit for redevelopment. Those plans must be approved by the state, Curry said.

Later this year, city officials plan to find a project developer.

"Hopefully by next year we will have developers here doing their thing," Curry said.

The fact that the city has done some heavy lifting to prepare for the project may attract developers, said John Kavanagh, a Greensboro builder.

"It is a very important site on a very important side of town," he said. "There is strong political will to do something good there."

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com