For the first time since 1957, the Civic Auditorium is not part of Estevan’s skyline.
Demolition of the venerable arena started in the early afternoon of May 15, and within 48 hours, the arena had been virtually demolished. The focus has now shifted towards cleanup of the site.
Rod March, the manager of facilities and parks for the City of Estevan, said the demolition went as expected.
“I’ve been working very closely with the contractor,” March told the Mercury. “We could have had the building down even quicker than this, but we were also working with the winds, so we intentionally kept that (western) half of the building up to allow for a break of the winds so that we could get most of the debris out of there before it starts blowing around.”
The contractor, Silverado Demolitions, told March in the morning of May 17 that they had to take the building down, or it was going to fall down on its own.
The demolition was a co-ordinated event with the contractors and the two excavators.
“Their comment to me was it’s in really bad shape, in terms of the rot and that in the structures, so they had to be extremely careful and work in tandem to take that down safely,” said March. “They were kind of surprised how it just collapsed on its own in several places as soon as they touched it.”
It meant they had to be very careful around the east and west ends, depending on the wind conditions.
The only issue, he said, has been a small amount of debris that escaped through the fence surrounding the Civic, but the contract with Silverado also stipulated that two people had to be outside of the fence, picking up any debris that got through.
“I’m extremely pleased so far as to how it went from a safety perspective and an efficiency perspective,” said March.
The wood and some other debris will be taken to the city’s landfill.
All of the metal from the arena will be taken to Saskatoon to be recycled.
Concrete will be stored separately, and will be used in the future for subgrading roads.
The only portion of the building that is still standing is the area that connected the Civic with the Power Dodge Curling Centre. That room wasn’t included in the demolition proposal, and March said it will remain standing for the time being.
“There are still some utilities and things like that which are in there, like water and that sort of thing, and they were not part of this proposal, because we still need to make sure that the curling rink is … on its own.”
Once the Civic is out of the way, the city will provide the curling rink with its own valves and sources, and then that last piece of the Civic can be taken down.
Martin Sarich with Silverado Demolitions said the Civic was in worse shape than what they thought, and he agreed with March that it went down faster than expected.
“When we were pulling it down, we pulled one beam down, and then the second one behind it would come down with it unexpectedly, so we changed game plans and came at it from a different strategy,” said Sarich.
All of the arches and the columns in the arena were separating, he said, and he could tell the ground was shifting
Sarich expects the rubble will be gone by May 23 or 24. Then work will begin on removing the concrete, which should take three or four days. Site grading will be the final component of the project.
Silverado Demolitions has done numerous arena demolitions in the past, including the one in Melville a few years ago. He said the Civic was a slightly weaker structure with the way it was built, but he found a lot of similarities between the Civic and other facilities Silverado has torn down in the past.
He hopes that all of the work can be finished by June 1. The deadline to have all of the work completed for the demolition is June 15.
March said the project was ahead of schedule, so the contractor took the long weekend off, and returned to work on May 22. Twenty-four hour security was on site during the long weekend.
While June 15 is the deadline to have the equipment off the site and all of the work associated with the demolition completed, March said that date does represent a time contingency.
“Any other weather event can happen. We know that. Or any other kind of unforeseen circumstance can happen,” said March. “But as of right now, there is nothing that required any change of work or anything.”
