When the Walls Come Tumbling Down

New Haven Coliseum's long goodbye is almost at its end

Melissa Nicefaro, Business New Haven, 08/22/2005

Early one Sunday morning this fall, something monumental is going to happen while you're still in bed. If you blink, you might miss it. In just 18.5 seconds, it will be over. And the result of it will appear in nine months.

"It," of course, is the long-awaited (and for some, long-dreaded) demolition of Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven.

The implosion itself - collapsing the structure onto its own footprint - will take less than 19 seconds, but the clean-up process will take about nine months from start to finish.

Pre-demolition work began this summer with the removal of oil tanks from underneath the arena. The site has to be perfectly clean of hazardous and regulated materials before what's left - the steel-framed pleasuredome and its parking garage - can come down.

The New Haven structural engineering firm of Spiegel Zamecnik & Shah prepared the Request For Proposal (RFP) and is handling technical administration of the project.

"Because of our knowledge of the building, how it works and what it is, and any of the idiosyncrasies about it, we developed the requirements for the design of the demolition," explains Spiegel Zamecnik engineer David Carlson.

"Since it's going to be imploded, there's a particular sequence of how the charges are set and the members are modified, and that's something that's done by the specialty subcontractor who actually does the blasting," he adds.

Once everything hazardous is removed, all flammable materials - seats, miles of drywall and wood - will be stripped from the building, leaving concrete, masonry and steel. Those materials will be processed and recycled once the building is demolished.

"There is very little asbestos," Carlson notes. "Just a couple of thousand square feet of plaster ceiling at the extreme north and south ends of the arena, and that's being removed right now. The building didn't have much in it in the first place, and over the course of different projects over the years, all of the pipe insulation containing asbestos has been removed. If they were going to go in and change out the boiler, they took care of it then."

Concludes Carlson, "It's remarkably clean."

The New Haven environmental engineering firm EnviroMed Services has been retained by the city's Office of Business Development to oversee the environmental aspect of the project. The firm provides a hazardous material inspection, design and engineering services, oversight monitoring during abatement of hazardous and regulated materials, as well as provide continuous ambient air sampling using real-time monitoring of air quality.

EnviroMed's industrial hygienist, engineers and geologists have spent the summer cleaning up to clear way for the implosion.

"Interior and exterior locations were inspected for asbestos, lead and regulated materials including but not limited to light bulbs and ballasts," explains Lawrence Cannon, EnviroMed's president. "We're performing a chemical inventory of miscellaneous waste materials, and a remediation specification [road map and job plan] was prepared for the contractor to adhere to the scope of work and compliance with applicable regulations."

Regulatory guidelines set forth by the Clean Air Act, the state's Department of Environmental Protection and other regulatory agencies oversee the kind of materials that are working on the cleanup inside the building.

The Coliseum is replete with "stuff" - old lighting systems, ballasts and an oil tank that needed to be removed. Such things may be of little concern to the public, but over the course of a demolition project, they must be removed before everything can be brought to the ground.

EnviroMed began with a survey of the building, then wrote a report that educates the contractor what need to be removed.

"It specifies the materials to be removed from the building and the manner in which they are to be removed," Cannon explains. "I don't like to use the word 'hazardous' for all of these materials; they are 'regulated,' but not all are hazardous. All [materials] are surveyed, quantified and qualified into various categories.

"Once the specifications are written, the contractor will go to the subcontractors and have the scope of work followed so that, when they get ready to take that building down, all of those materials will be gone," Cannon adds. "It's sort of like peeling an onion: first you remove the materials, then you handle the abatement and demolition."

There is nothing especially out of the ordinary inside the Coliseum, only asbestos, lead and some chemicals that have accumulated over the years.

During the process, EnviroMed monitors and documents air sampling to assure that contractors and subcontractors are following regulations during removal. In addition to monitoring in and around the building to make sure nothing escapes, workers are protected with special clothes and respirators.

"We are very knowledgeable about these ambient air regulations," says Cannon, a Yale graduate with a master's of public health degree.

"The other piece of the pie will be this: At the time of the demolition, we are going to [install] various ambient air stations - recording stations that detect levels of dust in the air and sample that air during the demolition process. They will be in and around the Coliseum and some of our engineers will have real-time monitoring devices that continuously measure the dust level."

For comparison purposes, this process begins a few days before actual demolition. he monitoring will ensure that the air remains clean and there is no residual dust.

"We don't expect any problem at all, because all of these remediations are going to be done with everything closed up," explains Cannon. "No further work will be done until all the hazardous and regulated materials are gone. Doors are locked. It's going to be self-contained."

Once the building is cleaned out, the wrecker, Stamford Wrecking Co., will prepare it for implosion. This involves a series of steps: holes are drilled to receive charges at all impact points, controlled explosives are installed into these holes, the charges are wired, safety checks are performed and the charges are detonated.

According to the demolition company's plan, the sequence of explosions is timed to fold the building in the direction planned for safety of adjacent buildings and structures.

Tony Bialecki, the city's deputy economic development director, met with the neighboring businesses and explained the demolition and implosion process back when the plan was put together.

"Because the Coliseum fronts on North Frontage Road, there are really no street closings on George, State or Church streets," Bialecki explains. "Even North Frontage will be open almost all of the time. The only time it will be closed is when they actually do the implosion, and that's just for the moment.

"Only South Orange Street, the section under the Coliseum, will be closed for a longer period during the process," he adds. "The Knights of Columbus will have full access in and out. There is a tunnel that services the [former] Chapel Square Mall and they're creating another alternate way of getting in there."

The overall project will take about nine months.

Says Carlson: "Once the building is down, we do some drawings to describe what's left. Once the building is all ground up, we fill in the hole and grade it, put a sidewalk here and there. Then, preparation begins for whatever the next phase of life is for that spot."

Long Wharf Theatre expects to leave its current Sargent Drive digs for a new construction at the Coliseum site in about six years.