Posted Jul 6, 2018, 4:30 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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Confirmed on March 9, 2019 for finishing the demolition and it's not a floor a week but every 3-5 days.
Quote:
By March of next year, the 44-storey Empire Landmark Hotel on Robson Street will be demolished and the concrete turned into 40,000 tonnes of recycled fill.
JMX Contracting expects to start taking down the former hotel and restaurant this week. JMX will be using several Brokk demolition machines that crush concrete and cut steel reinforcing for recycling.
Brokk machines are considered to be much quieter and produce less dust than traditional pneumatic machines used in demolitions.
Planned completion of the demolition is March 9, 2019. By then, working at rate of demolishing a floor every three to five days, JMX will have turned the tower at 1400 Robson St. into rubble that will be broken down into 40,000 tonnes of fill suitable for roads or construction.
Project manager Shane Macpherson said the demolition is particularly challenging because of the restaurant structure on the top that cantilevers out over four sides of the tower. It was the site of the Cloud 9 revolving restaurant
“This demolition presents a lot more challenges and complexities than a typical demolition because of the restaurant that sits on top,” Macpherson said.
“There is some extensive engineering that has been put in place to accommodate for the removal of the restaurant.”
JMX has had to build what is essentially a big scaffolding system underneath the restaurant to make sure it has “100 per cent control” of all the material removed from the structure on top of the tower.
The scaffolding was used as a deck to remove all the 1.2 m x 3.3 m (four foot x 11 ft.) windows that surrounded the restaurant. It will also be used for hoarding and netting to contain dust and debris.
After getting on site in March, JMX stripped the interior of the hotel including the elevator shaft. It was a time-consuming process because of the presence of asbestos, a hazardous material that was commonly used as insulation and in floor and ceiling tiles when the tower was built in 1973.
“I know I’ve had a lot of people call me and walk by and ask what the delay is. ‘Why is it taking so long?’” he said.
“A structure built back in the early ’70s is going to be full of asbestos. The abatement activity is about 90 per cent complete.”
Demolition will be done by several different types of Brokk machines, including a big model known as the 400 weighing 5,400 kg (12,000 lbs.). They’re considered safe machines because an operator controls them remotely from about 4.8 metres to six metres (16 to 20 feet) away outside of the demolition zone.
Brokks break the concrete into chunks no greater than 28 litres (one cubic foot) in size; it also cuts the steel reinforcing into pieces.
“You’re basically just breaking up the material, munching it up in passes from side to side,” Macpherson said.
Once it’s at that stage, the material is dumped down the elevator shaft, which contains much of the dust and noise.
“Essentially in these jobs here, we strip out the elevator core and as we demo the structure from the top down, we use the elevator core as our material chute,” said Macpherson, director of business and projects for JMX.
Once the debris falls to the bottom, it will be moved to what Macpherson calls the staging area. It’s in what used to be the tower’s six-storey west podium, which has been removed along with about 10.6 m (35 feet) of underground parking.
An excavator and processor in the staging area will separate the steel rebar from concrete, which will be ground up to use as a base material at construction sites and for road fill.
“All the concrete on this site will be recycled in addition to all the structural steel that will be recycled as well,” he said.
JMX is based in Stouffville, Ont., and operates across the country. Brokk is headquartered in Skellefteå, 800 kilometres north of Stockholm. It is named after Brokk (aka Brokkr) from Norse mythology, who forged the hammer used by Thor, god of war.
The 44-storey tower was built as a 357-room Sheraton hotel and became the Empire Landmark in 1997.
It is being replaced by the Landmark on Robson, which will be comprised of 237 market condos in two towers of 31 and 32 storeys with retail and office in a three-storey podium. Entrance for 63 social housing units will be on the lane. The new towers will have cantilevered balconies that alternate in the directions they project on each floor.
Asia Standard International Group Ltd is the parent company, whose principal office is in Hong Kong and registered office in Bermuda. Asia Standard International is a subsidiary of Asia Orient Holdings Ltd.
ASI says it develops and manages commercial, retail and hotel properties in Hong Kong and China.
Architecture for the new development is by PDP London and Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership in Vancouver; interior design is by Atelier Ikebuchi in Singapore.
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https://vancouversun.com/business/co...m-city-skyline
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