NEW ORLEANS — The owners of the collapsed Hard Rock Hotel are expecting to start demolition of three adjoining buildings Wednesday or Thursday.
“It’s been a long and difficult process but things have worked out,” Steve Dwyer, an attorney for Hard Rock developer 1031 Canal, said during a conference call with neighboring property owners Wednesday. “We expect the Red Zone demolition to start momentarily, possibly as early as tomorrow.”
The Red Zone refers to three buildings – the Old Post Office on Iberville Street and the former Alamo Theatre and another building on Canal Street – that engineers say must come down to allow crane access for a safe demolition of the partially collapsed high-rise.
The post office at 1022 Iberville is the first slated to come down, said Walter Zehner, a local structural engineer working with 1031 Canal’s demolition contractors.
“It’s probably going to take a couple days to get that building down,” Zehner said. “The second building to come down will be the 1027 Canal St. building, which is the one right adjacent to 1031. That will probably start early next week. And the last (Red Zone) building to come down will be the 1019-1025 (Canal) building, which is probably another week and a half or so away.”
RELATED: Preservationists won't stand in way of Hard Rock demolition that will take down 2 historic buildings
Zehner was hired as a local expert by St. Louis-based SID Engineering and is part of the demolition team with Kolb Grading and Marschel Wrecking, both from Missouri. He acknowledged the controversy surrounding the need to demolish the historic structures next door, which are owned by the lead owner on the Hard Rock project, Mohan Kailas, and the electrical contractor on the job, Todd Trosclair.
Some have complained it was a "land grab" by Kailas, but Zehner said it was necessary to demolish the buildings, which was allowed last week by emergency order by New Orleans Fire Chief Tim McConnell.
"One of the things I do in my practice is a lot of historic preservation," Zehner said. "I try to save buildings rather than tear them down. But unfortunately in this case there really is no alternative. The (Hard Rock) structure can’t be taken down from only one side, like from the Rampart Street side. We have to have cranes on both sides of the building to take it down. So, the only way we can do that is to get cranes in the area where these (adjacent) buildings are."
Zehner said after that, most likely starting on May 27, crews will begin taking down a tower crane that was dynamited in November and fell across the top of the Hard Rock structure. It is tied down, but is still considered dangerous, as it protrudes out over the sidewalk on Canal Street from a 14th floor deck.
Zehner said the next phase will be to recover the remains of two of the three workers killed in the initial collapse October 12, 2019. Crews will delicately remove debris over the bodies of Jose Ponce Arreola and Quinnyon Wimberly, who are trapped between the 8th and 10th floors in the collapse area along Rampart Street. Zehner said he expected that to be done in early June, paving the way for the main demolition of the top 10 floors of damaged steel.
Once those floors come down, Zehner said the surrounding streets will be open to traffic and neighboring properties will be safe to open.
He said the bottom eight floors of stable concrete should be completely demolished by early October.
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