Former Perdock building will be razed

    The entire Perdock Auto building will be demolished. That was the decision of the Marion Avenue Baptist Church which owns the building. The church has a contract with Active Thermal Concepts, a demolition company that has already begun to prepare the building for demolition, which is likely to start Monday. Cory Albers, the company?s vice president, expects to be done with the project by Dec. 30.

    The roof of the building collapsed Aug. 8 during Sunday morning church services. Bricks spilled onto the sidewalk and street and even onto a bus parked nearby. The roof collapse did not cause any injuries. Since the collapse, the sidewalk on the east side of Avenue B has been closed, and vehicular traffic has had to navigate a line of orange barrels that hold up a mesh fence around the building.

    Albers said the first order of business is to drop the rest of the roof. He expects to start hauling the rubble away on Monday.

    ?We?re preparing the area now to isolate the affected portion of the roof that needs to come down,? he said. ?That will be cleaned up first.?

    Active Thermal Concepts received permission from the DNR to proceed with an ?emergency demolition? because the roof has been drooping more and more each day. They will start demolishing the west side of the building where the collapse occurred. They will spray the debris with water and put it in lined trucks to protect the public from the spread of asbestos. Because of the asbestos in the debris, it has to be taken to an EPA-approved landfill and covered with 6 inches of dirt within 24 hours.

    ?All of our workers are asbestos-trained employees,? said Albers. ?They?re all licensed in the state of Iowa. This is the type of work we do for a living. We have safety meetings each morning to tell them which areas of the building they can go in and which they can?t.?

    Albers said that he knows where the asbestos is in the building from an asbestos study that was done on the building. After the collapsed roof is removed, a team of specialists will remove the asbestos that is left, so the rest of the building can be demolished normally.

    Winter weather will likely slow down the demolition process, and Albers realizes this.

    ?Cold weather always affects the equipment,? he said.

    He remarked that the six-week timeline was made with the understanding that the weather would prevent work on some of those days.

For more, see our Nov. 19 print edition.