Going, going, gone: The demolition of the Mortimer St. Garage by Passero Associates

Most projects that Passero Associates (PA) works on involve creating a new facility or rehabilitating an existing one. This past summer, PA had the opportunity to try their hand at something new and exciting - building demolition!! The proposed Transit Center, Performing Arts Center and Community College being constructed with the upcoming Renaissance Sq. project in downtown Rochester requires removal of several existing buildings, the first of which is the Old Mortimer St. Garage - an eight-level reinforced concrete structure built in the mid-1950s. The garage was condemned by the city of Rochester several years ago due to structural issues. PA was selected by the city of Rochester to design the demolition in a secure, environmentally sustainable manner, including preparation of the building demolition contract documents. Since the old garage sits between an historic structure and an active parking garage, surgical demolition with the use of mechanical equipment was required - explosives were not permitted. A shared load bearing wall between the old and new garage required a detailed staging plan for removal. Unique staging of the first floor slab removal was also required to ensure the foundation walls that support Mortimer St. and Division St. didn't collapse due to loss of lateral support.A large amount of asbestos was contained in the garage structure - the safe abatement of this environmental hazard was a major component of this project. The project also required the contractor to salvage and reuse as much of the structure as possible. This involved retrieving the steel rebar for salvage value and rubbelizing the concrete and brick for use as clean fill to fill in the two-story basement. The public outreach program developed for this project was greater than most. Generic public meetings on projects with rental properties are typically not well attended. Consequently, key stakeholders are often not aware of the impending project or its temporary impact to the area. To counter this, we met with each individual building tenant to explain the project, and followed up with telephone calls to property owners. The contracts for this $1.6 million project were awarded to Bianchi Industrial Services, Inc. of Syracuse in January. Environmental remediation and demolition began in January, and was completed by September. Dan Savage is vice president of Passero Associates, Rochester, N.Y.