If any of you like controlled demo this may be for (you)
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Three thousand pounds of explosives and about 16 seconds.
That’s what it took to topple Dominion Energy’s 21-story One James River Plaza office tower at 701 E. Cary St. early Saturday morning.
The crew in charge of the complex undertaking, D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. and
Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), this week caught up with BizSense to discuss all that’s involved with the process.
D.H. Griffin and CDI were hired by Hourigan and Clayco, the construction and development firms handling the process for Dominion.
Both D.H. Griffin and CDI have plenty of experience tearing things down in Richmond. D.H. Griffin has had an office here since 2004. CDI has done five implosions in the city – the first of which was in 1962 and the most recent being the old Chesapeake & Ohio office building in 1985.
But before dynamite and implosions came into the picture, D.H. Griffin’s Ken Tysinger said the first step is determining whether a structure is a good candidate for implosion versus traditional piece-by-piece demolition.
The main factors in that decision, Tysinger said, are height of the building and its proximity to adjacent structures. In this case, OJR is 340-some feet high from basement to the top.
That’s stretching the limits of the typical equipment that would be used to do a traditional demolition, Tysinger said.
“You need some help to bring it down. That’s when we call gravity,” he said.
Add to that the proximity of the site to two newer, glassy buildings, Gateway Plaza and Dominion’s 600 Canal Place, which sit on either side of OJR.
Dust from demolition is also a consideration. Basically, one must decide whether it’s more disruptive to have all the dust in one big cloud all at once on a weekend morning or the constant presence of dust over months from a traditional demolition.
“There’s going to be dust generated,” said CDI’s Mark Loizeaux. “It’s the same type of dust that would have been generated by demolition over months and months.”
Once implosion was chosen as the preferred route, D.H. Griffin crews came in and began what they call “soft demolition,” tearing up parts of the base of the building and gutting the inside of any environmentally hazardous materials.