April 15, 2010

JORDAN PRESS

The former headquarters of the Kingston Police, which was built in 1971, will be removed from Kingston’s downtown skyline by May.

FOCUS | Demolition & environmental engineering

Kingston, Ontario police station comes down one piece at a time

JORDAN PRESS

correspondent

KINGSTON, Ont.

For months, workers have gone through the former headquarters of the Kingston Police and have taken apart the old building.

There will be no wrecking ball for the old downtown monolith — the building is being demolished one piece at a time from the inside out.

“We’re taking the building apart piece by piece,” said Speros Kanellos, who is overseeing the demolition project for city hall. “It was a really well-built building.”

But as workers are demolishing the nearly 40-year-old structure, they are also building on the site.

Underneath the former police station are a pumping station and a transformer vault. Those pieces of infrastructure aren’t going anywhere and will remain on site.

To maintain the vault and pumping station — and maintain access to each — workers are constructing two small enclosures that will be completed by May, which is when the demolition project is scheduled to be completed.

“So we’re building two little buildings while we’re demolishing,” Kanellos said.

The enclosures are just one aspect of the $1.2-million demolition project, which is also seeing much of the concrete from the building itself stay on site in the form of fill.

The police force left their downtown home for a new, state-of-the-art, LEED-Gold certified facility on Division Street in 2007. It was a welcome move for the police department. The force had outgrown its home at the corner of Queen and Ontario streets in an area of downtown Kingston known as the North Block, which is also home to the $46.5-million K-Rock Centre.

The 51,000 square-foot structure was built downtown in 1971. It housed every aspect of the police department, including cells in the basement of the building. Previously, those cells had been in the basement of City Hall.

When the force left its downtown headquarters three years ago, the city looked for someone to move into the building, but admittedly didn’t actively market the site. A few potential occupants came forward, but, according to the city, the building’s shortcoming quashed any deals.

The city decided it would demolish the building and look for someone to develop the site.

The city considered removing the entire structure, including the footings and foundations, rather than the superstructure, but decided against that route because it could have increased the overall price tag for the project. The concern was that removing infrastructure in the building’s basement could increase demolition costs, and also increase expenses after the demolition was completed.

The basement of the building contains an existing ground water and pumping management system that would have had to be entirely rebuilt if the entire structure was removed.

The system currently discharges water into a sanitary sewer. If the system was removed, the ground water could require ongoing treatment, which would increase costs to the city and could also make the property a less attractive site for developers.

Another issue was that removing the system would require rebuilding the sidewalks surrounding the site, which would hinder pedestrian traffic through the area and increase project costs.

The city decided to keep the system where it is and build a housing unit for it while workers take down the rest of the building.

The first step in demolishing the building was removing any hazardous substances like asbestos, PCB ballasts and pipes that could harm workers.

Once that was taken care of, workers then started taking the building apart piece-by-piece. Kanellos said workers removed every piece of hardware from the interior of the building, such as doors and frames. Workers from United Wrecking continue to salvage any steel and other recyclable materials that could be used on other projects.

Anything of historical significance to the city or police department was removed prior to the force moving out in 2007, except for one item: The flagpole at the top of the building. Some retired officers asked to have the flagpole preserved. Kanellos said the demolition crew is working to meet that request.

“We said we’d save it for them,” Kanellos said.

The building itself and an attached parking structure were almost entirely constructed out of concrete. Instead of trucking the concrete away, workers have kept the concrete on site. Concrete blocks have been sandblasted, cleaned, then crushed and used as fill for the one level, underground parking garage on the site.

Kanellos said the city will still need to bring in granulars, or clean fill, for the infilling, but not as much had the concrete been entirely removed from the site.

Starting this month, workers were to begin taking down the walls of the building, starting at the north end of the site on Barrack Street and moving south to Queen Street, officially removing the former police headquarters from Kingston’s downtown skyline.

The site will become a parking lot until such time as it is redeveloped.

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