One by one the old Coast Guard buildings are coming down. The Super 8 Motel - guest accommodations for Coast Guard relatives and friends - was first to go, ripped apart by a large claw in less than three hours on June 27 to clear space for a stage. Rain canceled the stage's inauguration by the New York Philharmonic. Next in line are the Bachelor Officer Quarters and the school just south of Division Road, adjacent to the ballfields. The ten apartment buildings that fill the southwest corner of the Island, known as Liberty Village, will also be gone before the weather closes in. By next summer the cleared soil will be a grassy new picnic area.
None of these buildings are much more than a quarter-century old.
Their removal will make way mainly for the park spaces yet to be
designed.
The Nacirema Group - that's "American" spelled backwards - based in Bayonne, New Jersey, is doing the demolition. Its past work includes the World Trade Center cleanup, where their crews worked double 12-hour shifts 24/7 for a year.
Refuse from the demolition is divided in three directions - for keeping, recycling and dumping. "Clean fill" such as masonry and concrete blocks will be held on the Island for use in reshaping the landscape. Metal is separated out for recycling, using huge magnets,
then tossed into bar-coded dumpsters, which go to salvagers who confirm receipt by scanning the bar code. "Dirty" materials, such as asbestos, go straight to off-island landfills.
The work will eat up most of the $20 million tranche of city and state funds committed for demolition and site improvements in fiscal 2008. The rest will cover "hazardous material abatement" - removal of asbestos, lead and other undesirables - in buildings to be torn down later.
The Nacirema Group - that's "American" spelled backwards - based in Bayonne, New Jersey, is doing the demolition. Its past work includes the World Trade Center cleanup, where their crews worked double 12-hour shifts 24/7 for a year.
Refuse from the demolition is divided in three directions - for keeping, recycling and dumping. "Clean fill" such as masonry and concrete blocks will be held on the Island for use in reshaping the landscape. Metal is separated out for recycling, using huge magnets,
then tossed into bar-coded dumpsters, which go to salvagers who confirm receipt by scanning the bar code. "Dirty" materials, such as asbestos, go straight to off-island landfills.
The work will eat up most of the $20 million tranche of city and state funds committed for demolition and site improvements in fiscal 2008. The rest will cover "hazardous material abatement" - removal of asbestos, lead and other undesirables - in buildings to be torn down later.