CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Thursday, demolition crews started demolishing the old Montgomery Ward building at Westdale Mall.

After 35 years as an enclosed shopping mall, Westdale will soon have a completely new look. Plans call for a $90 million redevelopment, creating other retail settings along with housing, office and restaurant space.

The only stores that will remain are J.C. Penney and Younkers, along with the vacant Von Maur building, which will be repurposed.

Cary Cavanaugh had to see the demolition for himself. He spent ten years at Wards working as a salesman.

"Yeah, it's just a big empty hole now," said Cavanaugh. "This store averaged $13 million a year."

The demo of the 124,000 square foot building is a big step in the redevelopment of Westdale. It will take crews 6 to 8 weeks to clear the building. They plan to demo the mall's connecting corridors this summer. The project's first new stores could pop up in 2015.

Mall officials are happy to be making progress.

"I think people will start to be true believers that this is going forward and that we're committed to the redevelopment. I hope everyone is excited as we are," said Westdale General Manager Lisa Rowe.

Cedar Rapids resident Judy Trimpe is sure excited.

"I'm ready for something to be done with Westdale," said Trimpe.

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Demolition Begins On Old Montgomery Ward Building

Demolition

PREPARATORY OPERATIONS

Before the start of every demolition job, the demolition contractor should take a number of steps to safeguard the health and safety of workers at the job site. These preparatory operations involve the overall planning of the demolition job, including the methods to be used to bring the structure down, the equipment necessary to do the job, and the measures to be taken to perform the work safely. Planning for a demolition job is as important as actually doing the work. Therefore all planning work should be performed by a competent person experienced in all phases of the demolition work to be performed.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in its ANSI A10.6-1983 - Safety Requirements For Demolition Operations states:

Engineering Survey

Prior to starting all demolition operations, OSHA Standard 1926.850(a) requires that an engineering survey of the structure must be conducted by a competent person. The purpose of this survey is to determine the condition of the framing, floors, and walls so that measures can be taken, if necessary, to prevent the premature collapse of any portion of the structure. When indicated as advisable, any adjacent structure(s) or improvements should also be similarly checked. The demolition contractor must maintain a written copy of this survey. Photographing existing damage in neighboring structures is also advisable.

The engineering survey provides the demolition contractor with the opportunity to evaluate the job in its entirety. The contractor should plan for the wrecking of the structure, the equipment to do the work, manpower requirements, and the protection of the public. The safety of all workers on the job site should be a prime consideration. During the preparation of the engineering survey, the contractor should plan for potential hazards such as fires, cave-ins, and injuries.

If the structure to be demolished has been damaged by fire, flood, explosion, or some other cause, appropriate measures, including bracing and shoring of walls and floors, shall be taken to protect workers and any adjacent structures. It shall also be determined if any type of hazardous chemicals, gases, explosives, flammable material, or similar dangerous substances have been used or stored on the site. If the nature of a substance cannot be easily determined, samples should be taken and analyzed by a qualified person prior to demolition.

During the planning stage of the job, all safety equipment needs should be determined. The required number and type of respirators, lifelines, warning signs, safety nets, special face and eye protection, hearing protection, and other worker protection devices should be determined during the preparation of the engineering survey. A comprehensive plan is necessary for any confined space entry.

Utility Location

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Demolition

After educating Japanese children since 1956, Kiyokawa Elementary School lies abandoned, its walls and roof crumbling because there are no longer enough pupils to fill it and the town cant afford to demolish the building.

The school, in Shonai, Yamagata prefecture, 500 kilometers north of Tokyo, is one of thousands of derelict buildings in Japan known as haikyo, legacies of the boom years in the 1960s and 70s. As the populations of towns grow older or move to cities, indebted local governments have left the structures to rot, prompting Prime Minister Shinzo Abes administration to come up with a novel solution: demolition bonds.

This symbolizes the end of an era, the turnaround from a rising population to depopulation, said Akiyoshi Takumori, chief economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management Co. The shedding of old structures is necessary for the rebirth of regions and will test their creativity.

Kiyokawa Elementary is a reminder of the widening divide Abe faces as his efforts to revive Japans economy accelerate an exodus to the capital and industrial centers like Osaka. Almost half of the nations municipal districts -- 1,513 -- have vanished since March 1999 as towns and villages merged with neighbors amid shrinking populations and declining revenue.

Municipalities need to cut their losses by removing unused buildings to reduce maintenance costs, said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo.

A public housing project in central Japan built 45 years ago that consumes 18 million yen in annual maintenance fees for such things as basic repairs, cleaning and security, would cost 91.69 million yen to demolish, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

The government plans to submit a bill in the parliament session starting this month to revise the current law so that regional government bonds can fund the demolition of surplus and unsightly structures. Currently, local governments can only sell debt for reconstruction projects that include new facilities or buildings.

Our inaction is due to the difficulty in procuring money given our very dire fiscal state, said Michinori Souma, a general affairs official at Shonai town hall, who said it would cost 20 million yen to remove the school.

Shonais annual budget is about 10 billion yen, much of which comes from grants and subsidies from the central government. The town owes about 13.7 billion yen, according to the local government.

The special bonds would encourage municipalities to manage infrastructure with a long-term vision, including dealing with decaying structures, said Takashi Murata, deputy director at the local administration bureau in the Internal Affairs Ministry. Demand for public facilities is changing as the population declines.

Originally posted here:
Demolition Bonds Spell End for Japan’s Decaying Ghost Buildings

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- After years of false starts and delays, the redevelopment of Westdale Mall began Thursday with the demolition of the former Montgomery Ward building.

A crew from D.W. Zinser of Walford started taking down the Edgewood Road SW side of the building shortly after 8 a.m. The demolition is the first step in a $90 million redevelopment of the 35-year-old retail complex by Frew Development Group of Denver, Colo.

"I knew it would come down eventually," said Ron Ruggles of Cedar Rapids. "I was a Westdale shopper in the early days when it was a real mall."

As he watched the Zinser crew tearing down the front of the Montgomery Ward building, Loren Culver of Cedar Rapids remembered a very different Westdale.

"When I was growing up, Westdale was 'the mall,'" Culver said. "Lindale Mall was kind of on the decline and Westdale was the mall to go to.

"Over the years, Lindale has done a lot of upgrading and Westdale had less and less stores. Now, it's kind of the opposite of what it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s."

Frew Development plans to demolish the central portion of the mall later this spring, leaving anchors J.C. Penney and Younkers as well as the vacant former Von Maur building. The redevelopment plans call for creating a mixed use destination with retail, offices, senior housing, a hotel, banks and restaurants.

"I'm really excited about what has been proposed," Ruggles said. "It's going to be good for Cedar Rapids and the west side."

The Cedar Rapids City Council has agreed to provide $5 million in upfront money for use by the Westdale project, as called for in the existing development agreement between the city and the developer.

The city will recoup the money from tax-incentive revenue that comes with the added value of the redevelopment.

Continued here:
Crews Begin Demolishing Part of Cedar Rapids' Westdale Mall

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