Historic hotel in downtown Crookston could start coming down next week.

Polk County commissioners on Tuesday signed a $340,000 contract with Industrial Builders of Fargo, N.D., to demolish the Wayne Hotel.

Formerly the Palace Hotel, the 119-year-old structure was turned into rental apartments in the 1970s. The three-story brick building has been empty for the last 10 years and has been on a list of Minnesota’s “10 Most Endangered Historic Places.”

A local preservation group, the Prairie Skyline Foundation, has tried to save the building.

Read more here.

More comes to light on little-known damage caused to Lambeau Field during demolition.

A state-operated insurance fund says it paid $10,000 in settling a $200,000 claim for damages to Lambeau Field during the stadium’s historic renovation.

The Local Government Property Insurance Fund, which had previously declined to divulge settlement details, says it received $190,000 in the settlement with Spirtas Wrecking Co.

Spirtas crews accidentally dropped demolition materials on the Lambeau bowl during the 2002 renovation, causing damage to the stadium’s structural steel, concrete foundation and bleacher seats.

Read more here.

City council agrees to demolish former Iowa meatpacking plant.

The City Council in Fort Dodge has voted to demolish the former IBP meatpacking plant that once employed hundreds of people.

The Messenger newspaper in Fort Dodge reports that council members on Monday voted to pay $430,000 to hire a firm to knock down the plant. The plant slowly deteriorated over 25 years and it should be demolished by May 20. The site will then be offered by the city for development.

Read more here.

With ten new jobs on offer, demolition-jobs.co.uk’s recruitment area just sprang into life.

The economy may be in the doldrums, margins may be wafer-thin and workload might be all but non-existent. But the job vacancies area of demolition-jobs.co.uk – brought to you in conjunction with HumRes Recruitment – just sprang into life with the addition of some 10 new high-profile demolition positions across the UK.

The site has just listed three new estimator jobs, two contracts manager jobs and a pair of business development manager roles along with site manager and divisional manager positions.

You can find full details of these jobs and more on our sister site, demolition-jobs.co.uk

Mystery as former Swindon office block is torn down

Dorcan House, a large purpose built office building divided into three interconnecting blocks, is being torn down in Swindon by 777 Group. The site on Eldene Drive, next to Fit4less, was surrounded by hoardings and had a single excavator working on the building yesterday.

According to local newspaper the Swindon Advertiser, it is unclear why the site is being cleared as no planning application to build anything else has been submitted.

However, given the current economic climate and the cost of maintaining an unoccupied office building, we have a pretty good idea precisely why this one is being torn down.

Read more here.

Council refutes claims that estate demolition was a charade to secure funding.

The deputy leader of London’s Greenwich council has been forced to respond to claims that the partial demolition of the Ferrier Estate was a “charade to secure development funding”. Laying the blame for delays firmly at the door of the government, councillor Peter Brooks said:

“We have had a specific deadline imposed on us by the Government to start work on an extra care scheme that will provide housing and support for 170 households aged 55 and over. The Government has threatened to withdraw a £21m grant for this scheme if work does not begin by the end of March 2011. As a result of the Government’s refusal to roll this grant into next year, we have had to issue legal Notices to a number of remaining tenants. Every tenant will be given at least two offers suitable for their needs – with repossession only to be used as a very last resort.”

The council admit that it will lose £21 million in government funding if residents are not evicted and development has not begun by March next year.

Large sections of the Ferrier were left as partial ruins earlier this year with little apparent rebuilding taking place since. The leader of Greenwich Conservatives Spencer Drury claims that these partial demolitions are merely a “charade” to suggest that work is taking place where it is not:

“The Labour Council is now so far behind schedule it is hurrying through the eviction of tenants before the end of the financial year to ensure government funding remains in place. Labour has mishandled this process from the very beginning and now we find that the demolition appears to be simply a charade to suggest work has started when in fact no rebuilding is taking place.”

Read the full story here.

Armac underway with delicate dismantling in turbine hall.

Armac Group is currently deconstructing the top four floors of the Alstom Power Building in Stafford above the live Turbine Hall. The Turbine Hall must remain fully operational as it contains a 350 tonne capacity overhead crane, the largest of its kind in Europe.

Armac is using a 70 tonne crawler to service the dismantling from the upper floors to ground level but have also utilised a 3 tonne mini crawler crane at upper floor level to provide additional hook time for the steel dismantling works.

”The problem with using the main 70 tonne crawler is that every lift would have been a blind lift so it can be slow to centre the hook using radios. With the use of the 3t mini crawler we can quickly dismantle the steel frame with top burners and rest cuts and then lower several steel sections at a time to ground level with the large crawler,” says contracts director Noel McLean. “The crane can also pick and carry the sections to a central loading out point. We assessed the permissible floor loadings and designed the lift plan around the use of the 3 tonne crawler with great success. We have removed an entire floor of steel in two days using two top burners and the mini crawler, literally halving the original programme time for each floor”.

Armac is due to complete the £400k Dismantling Scheme by mid November.

Prince Charles pays tribute to Ian Wooldridge after helicopter tragedy

The boss of Surrey demolition contractor Wooldridge Group was one of three men killed when their helicopter crashed in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down at the weekend, reports leading construction news resource, ConstructionEnquirer.

Ian Wooldridge, 52, died when a private helicopter came down near Leitrim Lodge in Carcullion, outside Hilltown.

The construction boss was a friend of the Royal family and had been traveling with a close polo friend of Prince Charles.

Wooldridge was a member of the Guard’s polo club in Windsor and was linked with Harcourt Developments and the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter in Belfast’s docklands.

He ran the £40m turnover Surrey-based Wooldridge Group with his brother Graham. The firm, a member of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors, employs around 300 and runs a fleet of more than 400 machines.

Read more here.

2002 Lambeau Field skybox accident went under radar.

A little-known accident during the Lambeau Field renovation in 2002 caused significant damage to the stadium and resulted in a court fight that continued until years later.

Repair costs at the home of the Green Bay Packers topped more than $1 million, and a taxpayer-funded insurance plan filed suit to avoid getting stuck with $200,000 of the repair bill.

Officials at the state-operated Local Government Property Insurance Fund will not disclose how they ended the legal squabble with construction contractor Spirtas Wrecking Co. — a battle resolved last year through an out-of-court settlement.

Green Bay city records show that Spirtas crews caused damage to city-owned Lambeau Field while demolishing and removing the stadium’s old skyboxes in February 2002.

According to records at City Hall and in the court case, crews accidentally dropped demolition materials in the stadium’s bowl, damaging the arena’s structural steel, concrete foundation and bleacher seats.

Read more here.

Eric Kelly oversees Athens implosion.

A historical building in the centre of Athens was destroyed in 14 seconds on Sunday. The Navy Veterans Fund building was demolished on in a controlled explosion.

Athens Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis decided the building must go so as to create a new square covering 1,300 sq meters in an area of the city, where crime and squalor have become rife over the last few years.

The derelict building was abandoned from the’80s and was bought by the municipality of Athens as part of a programme aimed at improving the city centre.