April 16, 2010

FERRO DEMOLITION INC.

This St. Catharines mortuary was the last building in the downtown renovation to be torn down. There was consideration given to preserving it as a heritage building, but in the end, it was deemed not worth keeping.

FEATURE | Demolition/Environmental Engineering

Ferro Canada demolishes St. Catharine, Ontario block to make way for arts centre

PETER KENTER

correspondent

ST. CATHARINES

A former mortuary has fallen to the wrecking process, but some of its parts will live on.

The Passfield and McIntyre mortuary was the last building demolished to make way for the City of St. Catharines’ $54-million St. Paul Street performing arts centre.

It attracted additional scrutiny because of its potential heritage value and the local council reviewed plans to incorporate the building into the arts centre, but architects Diamond and Schmitt advised that retaining it would negatively impact on the new design.

In the end, the 1860s-era structure was stripped of doorknobs, hinges and a brass fireplace under the eye of St. Catharines Museum staff before excavators took over.

Demolition contractor Ferro Canada Inc. of Richmond Hill, Ont. was awarded the contract for $749,450 plus HST to demolish a series of buildings in the city’s downtown, including addresses on Carlisle Street and a series of buildings along St. Paul Street, but not the former mortuary.

“We were still on the site performing the final backfill and grading of the other buildings,” says Peter Ferrante, president and CEO, Ferro Canada Inc. “So we could give them a very competitive price.”

Ferro was awarded a separate demolition contract worth $66,000 plus HST for the mortuary, which included removal of hazardous material and preservation of exterior sandstone foundation blocks originally quarried in nearby Grimsby. Demolition took about two weeks, from the end of March to early April.

“It was a mortuary in historical designation only,” says Ferro project manager, Monica Dedic. “There was nothing spooky about it. The sandstone blocks are now waiting on pallets, shink-wrapped and ready to be incorporated into the new arts centre.”

Each building in the contract required a large component of hazardous material abatement, including removal of plaster, floor tiles and ceiling tiles containing asbestos. The abatement portion of the contract lasted from the end of November to mid-January.

The first building to be demolished was the Knight’s Inn Hotel, a two-storey cast-in-place and precast concrete building, with brick veneer exterior walls and a wood frame roof. The building was demolished in January to provide a staging area for the remaining demolition operation, and to provide a large turning circle for tractor-trailers used to remove demolition materials off-site for recycling.

Other buildings on the demolition roster include a former United Auto Workers hall, a bookstore, residential apartments and a take-out restaurant.

The structures ranged from buildings with concrete-block foundations and wood frames, to cast-in-place concrete with structural steel frames.

The contract included cutting and capping of all services, removal of asphalt parking lots, excavation, backfill and re-grading of the entire site.

Ferro employed about 25 workers and four excavators on the contract.

All told, the buildings were demolished into about 200 truckloads of concrete and brick, and 80 truckloads of steel and wood.

Project challenges included the removal of thousands of volumes from the bookstore. “It was floor-to-ceiling with books,” says Ferrante. “We needed to remove them before we started asbestos abatement, so we had to take them out by hand. We offered them up to local charities and the demolition staff also took their pick of what was left.”

Other surprises included the discoveries of abandoned underground storage tanks and century-old building foundations underneath the hotel parking lot.

Print | Comment