Demolition of Younkers building begins

Friday afternoon, crews worked on the ground cleaning up loose pieces of scaffolding and debris still in the streets after the Younkers building fire in March.

View video of this story.

"There will be crews working from man-lifts, Cory Christensen, deputy building official said. And doing a lot of the work by hand, taking down small pieces to make sure that the walls don't come down in a big crash causing a domino effect."

Phase one of demolition involves removal of the upper two levels of walls in the east building. That will take about six weeks.

"They really need to be taken down so crews can get a good look and reevaluate the walls that are still standing to see if there is an opportunity to save them or if they also have to come down," Christensen said.

Crews have also been out installing protective scaffolding along the Hub Tower and the EMC building in preparation for the demolition.

"There's a lot of concern with the north exterior wall of the Younkers building because of the close proximity to the building to the north, the Des Moines Partnership building, he said. If we disrupt too much there's a chance that wall may fall into the partnership and we want to make sure we're taking every precaution possible to make sure that doesn't happen."

After phase one of the demolition engineers have to decide if this building is sound enough to salvage or if it should be taken down to the ground.

Read the original here:
Demolition of Younkers building begins