If it's true that the bigger they are, the harder they fall, the Salt Palace Acord Arena ought to fall very hard.
"Explosively" is the adjective officials are now using.After weeks of study and what one county official described as "cautious indecision," the demolition contractor is planning to bring down what's left of the arena with explosives placed along the upper sections of the support columns.
The change in strategy became apparent earlier this week when the contractor, Gillingham Construction Co., applied for the required explosives permit from Salt Lake City. The permit requires 10-day advance notice for the use of explosives in demolition projects.
Gillingham, a Boise-based firm, originally intended to bring down the palace arena by "snipping" its concrete columns one by one, a proposal that had Salt Lake County officials biting their nails with worry.
Although blasting the arena will cost more than chopping it down, county officials were clearly relieved by the new approach. "We think it's the way to go," said W. Sands Brooke, Salt Palace expansion and renovation project manager.
"The biggest issue was safety," Brooke said. "We feel a lot better with a plan that offers predictable results and exact timing."
The blast is tentatively scheduled for soon after the 10-day notice requirement is met - around March 12-13 - leaving just enough time for site cleanup before the general contractor moves in to build the new $70 million Salt Palace Convention Center.
"We would have liked to have been a little farther along at this point, but we're still on schedule," Brooke said, explaining that the demolition delays have been absorbed into a "cushion" that was built into the timetable.
He said the general construction contract will be awarded as planned in April and predicted the project will be finished by the October 1995 deadline established by the County Commission.
The final countdown to knockdown has not been as smooth as anticipated, according to Brooke, because no one has ever demolished a building quite like the Salt Palace.
Citing its unusual design and extensively reinforced structure, retired architect Harold K. Beecher, who designed the Salt Palace with partner Bruce J. McDermott, warned in a 1992 interview with the Deseret News that the arena would not fall easily.
The 25-year-old structure has a skeleton of 36 concrete and rebar columns that anchor a webbing of massive roof cables similar to those of a suspension bridge.
The demolition contractor originally devised a procedure designed to increase the stress on the structure slowly, by cutting the skeletal supports out from under it.
That process would have begun with machinery "nibbling" at the concrete columns to expose the steel rebar inside. Then, huge mechanical shears capable of exerting 12,000 tons of pressure would have snipped every other column. Finally, the shears would have clipped the remaining columns - very carefully - until the arena collapsed.
Brooke said the biggest drawback of the earlier strategy was its unpredictability. There was no way of telling whether the arena would fall in pieces or in a single "whoosh," he explained. Also, officials feared for the safety of the crews responsible for shearing those final critical columns.
Though the shears could cut one of the huge columns in about five or six minutes, Brooke said the entire process would have taken hours or even days. By using explosives, crews can bring down the palace at a predetermined moment, probably during a weekend, when there are fewer people downtown.
Salt Lake County public information officer Jim Braden said that in the interest of public safety, there probably will be no advance public announcement of the big blast.
However, hotels and businesses that surround the area will be notified of the impending fall, sidewalks will be cordoned off and police will close all but the eastern-most lane on West Temple and western-most lane on 200 West to traffic.
Before the demolition work began in January, county officials thought the building would be gone by the end of February. However, in addition to the rethinking of demolition tactics, crews encountered more asbestos than expected during the exploratory stages.
The additional asbestos removal effort caused several weeks delay and added $185,000 to the $531,000 that was budgeted for that part of the job. However, Gillingham's $1.9 million bid for the general demolition contract was well below the $3.2 million county officials thought it would cost.
The proposal to blast the arena is actually a fallback to "Plan A." More than a year ago, County Commission Chairman Jim Bradley said the arena would probably be "imploded" and suggested some enterprising moviemaker might want to pay for the rights to film the big event. There were no takers.
Construction workers and photographers who have been inside the debris-strewn shell of the arena say moviemakers have also missed an opportunity to use the setting as a dramatic backdrop.