There is a crane there now.

I wonder if it would fall under its own weight if they pulled all those ceiling braces out? I'd always go right to the roof or over to tower place when I had to park there to avoid the feeling i was going to be squashed.

 

Groundbreaking occurred this morning. Estimated completion dates are Summer 2018 for the garage and retail, Spring 2019 for the residential.

^ Just in time for the 2020 census. I'm really curious to see the Downtown/Over-the-Rhine population figures once all these projects are complete.

Possible Enquirer pic of the groundbreaking from out a window on the other side of the building. (I kid)

Here’s when streets will close for Fourth and Race demolition

 

 

Demolition of the former Pogue’s garage starts Saturday, Sept. 12, and the work will close some downtown Cincinnati streets for the weekend.

 

Development and city officials kicked off the demolition Thursday morning with a cinder block breaking in the old garage.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/09/08/here-s-when-streets-will-close-for-fourth-and-race.html

 

Coming down!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This thing is going down a lot quicker than the Western-Southern Garage, it appears.  That one was built to support a tower that was never constructed.  The wrecking ball had to hit each upright about ten times before any sort of crack appeared. 

Those photos are sweet. Looks like a superhero movie film set or something. Can anyone confirm that the big skywalk that connected this garage to Mabley Place will also be coming down in this demo? There is a small skywalk connecting Saks with Carew, but the huge one that served both as an auto bridge and an extension of the mall (think there was a nail salon and a few other stores in it) is horrendous. It creates a large dark environment for a large portion of the block and essentially ruins the pedestrian experience. Getting that mess down will do so much to improve this part of Race.

A sign says demolition will go until February.

This makes me very happy to see! :)

A sign says demolition will go until February.

 

Made me curious. Does demo include excavation to remove footers, etc.?

I would guess so. So the building may be completely down before the new year.

 

September ariel.jpg (2) by 3CDC Cincinnati, on Flickr

 

September ariel by 3CDC Cincinnati, on Flickr

What was the reason for not imploding? Was it cost? Because this seems very slow...

 

Still excited to see it going, but that's a long demo process.

What was the reason for not imploding? Was it cost? Because this seems very slow...

 

Part of the Hyatt/Saks butts right up to the back of it, plus I bet there's concerns about all the historic buildings across 4th Street.  Being so old it may have too much rebar in the concrete to bring down without extra explosives, compounding the proximity issues.  That's my guess anyway. 

^ In addition, I think given the tight confines, the resulting mess of debris would just be too unwieldy. I work nearby and watch this all the time, the actual demolition doesn't take that long, they probably spend 10% of the time with the wrecking ball, and the other 90% of the time hauling off the mess. Given that the time spend hauling everything off would take just as long either way, the schedule savings probably wouldn't be that great.

 

On a related note, at times the sound of demolition coming out of this garage sounds like the apocalypse. I don't really know how to describe it and my phone sucks at recording sounds or else I'd try and capture it.

I think when you see how much work it takes to bring one of these things down by force (rather than dynamite), you gain an appreciation for just how strong the World Trade Center towers were.  A wrecking ball weighs around 10,000lbs and probably hits a building at somewhere around 50mph.  Meanwhile, the airplanes that hit the towers were 500,000lbs and traveling at 500mph.  I assume that the weight of the towers above the impact points gave the cores a lot of strength, but I never took a physics or engineering class so I'm just guessing.  Obviously, the way to undermine a building is to kick out its legs, either with dynamite or with heat (in the case of a steel building), not to come at it with blunt force. 

It's a very slow laborious process, parsing out the steel, debris, removal etc. The demo of the Western Southern garage seemingly took forever as well. My old office was across the street. So much steel in these things to salvage.

I think when you see how much work it takes to bring one of these things down by force (rather than dynamite), you gain an appreciation for just how strong the World Trade Center towers were.  A wrecking ball weighs around 10,000lbs and probably hits a building at somewhere around 50mph.  Meanwhile, the airplanes that hit the towers were 500,000lbs and traveling at 500mph.  I assume that the weight of the towers above the impact points gave the cores a lot of strength, but I never took a physics or engineering class so I'm just guessing.  Obviously, the way to undermine a building is to kick out its legs, either with dynamite or with heat (in the case of a steel building), not to come at it with blunt force. 

 

The WTC had an atypical situation in that it is what's called a bundled tube structure. Basically the floors collapsed at the point of impact which meant that quite a few of the columns (which in a bundled tube are all located on the perimeter) were destroyed. The load had to then move horizontally through the remaining portions of the collapsed floors to the adjacent columns, putting them beyond the length at which they'd buckle under that load.

 

There's one specific close up video that shows this buckling occur on the south tower. You can see one column buckle inwards and it just compounds from there. And once it started it wasn't going to stop.

Get this thing out of here

Seeing this thing gone will be surreal. Like that weird feeling you got when you were a kid and your tooth finally fell out.

Time lapse of the demo:

 

https://www.senserasystems.com/public/TurnerConstructionCincinnati/M68653864331

Plaza + modern sculpture = formula.

 

Discussion of the garage at 7th and Elm: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,30914.0.html

It seems like they're really moving quickly on tearing down the garage now!

Halfway there, more or less.

 

 

That last pic is my favorite. While younger me got a kick out of driving outdoors from building to building, current me is glad to see it go.

 

Sorry if asked before, but what is the timeline date for this project to be completed? Is Spring 2018 an optimistic outlook?

That sounds way too soon. Is that an official timeframe? I thought they weren't even planning on being done with demolition until February. A little over a year to fully build out the building and be ready for tenants seems a touch out of the realm of possibility. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're going to have a bigger crew than normal working on it to get it finished as soon as possible.

 

But if I had to guess I'd imagine that's when the garage portion will open with the residential tenants moving in 6 months or so after that.

As for timeline for project completion:

The garage and commercial space portions of the project are expected to be completed in the summer of 2018, with the residential component finishing in early 2019.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/09/08/here-s-when-streets-will-close-for-fourth-and-race.html

The apartment manager for my 4th and Race building sent this out today:

 

"October 24 - November 6

Race Street will be completely closed to through traffic from 5th Street to 4th Street, for the demolition of the skywalk."

 

So the skywalk is coming down soon!

The northern skywalk connecting Carew to Saks will remain...

I have less of an issue with that one. The giant, two-story skywalk linking the garage to the former Tower Place Mall is the one that blocks a ton of sunlight and generally makes the street underneath unpleasant, and that's coming down.

Race Street overpass is down now, and the block is open to traffic now:

Looks so much better already. And accentuates how awful the Saks building is and how desperately it needs to be demolished and redeveloped to make that stretch closer to feeling complete again.

My thoughts exactly, when I saw that picture my reaction was, "Oh wow that big ugly bridge is finally gone, look how much more light and... damn Saks is an uglier building than I remember."

I bet the Saks building will have an ArtWorks mural on it within 3 years.

I bet the Saks building will be in the process of being redeveloped within 3 years.

I think last time we discussed this on the forum, somebody pointed out that the Millennium Hotel ballroom is above Saks. So the only way Saks gets redeveloped is if the Millennium Hotel is willing to give up their ballroom which is probably a decent revenue source.

I think you mean the Hyatt ballroom, not the Millennium.  And the Hyatt just underwent a $25 million renovation a couple years ago and is very nice, and really an excellent event space. 

Oops, yeah, it's the Hyatt's ballroom.

Haha, I don't know why, but having the skywalk knocked down makes me so excited.  I'm weird like that, well maybe we all are a little bit ;-)  But I am really excited for the transformation of 4th Street.  It is getting better and better by the day.

Its amazing how much that garage killed that block.

Dec 31, 2016:

 

 

 

 

New pics from 3CDC:

 

 

 

Update: The garage has just a small portion of the corkscrew left...

Woah that's so crazy looking. How open does 4th feel right now? It must feel like an entirely different street.