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Realty Tower demolition starts today

Work will take 4 to 6 weeks to complete

By DAVID SKOLNICK

Staff writer

YOUNGSTOWN — The Realty Tower contractor said demolition work will start today and take four to six weeks to complete with the goal of having enough of the downtown building taken down by Aug. 2 to allow two nearby structures to reopen.

Gary Moderalli, head of Moderalli Excavating, which is demolishing Realty, said Thursday: “Demolition will begin Friday. A crane with the (wrecking) ball will be used. We have to do it safely.”

Also, Kollin Chupa, a spokeswoman for YO Properties 47 LLC, Realty’s owner, and Live Youngstown Property Management LLC, which manages the property, said Thursday, “I can confirm that all necessary paperwork has been submitted and demolition will proceed tomorrow morning. Again, this process has been fluid with a lot of moving parts. It has been of utmost importance that all elements have been properly assessed, coordinated and completed.”

Demolition is expected to start at 1 p.m. today.

A May 28 gas explosion caused significant damage to the downtown building on East Federal Street that had a Chase Bank branch on the ground floor and 23 apartments on the upper floors.

The explosion killed Akil Drake, a Chase worker, and injured nine others in the building.

Moderalli’s company moved large demolition equipment June 28 to the Realty site in the city’s downtown.

Moderalli submitted a partial application July 5 to the Mahoning County Building Department for the Realty demolition. All of the required paperwork was turned in by Thursday to the department.

Jeff Uroseva, the county’s building official, told The Vindicator on Wednesday that because Youngstown fire Chief Barry Finley declared Realty Tower an emergency demolition, the work to take down the building could have already commenced.

But Moderalli said Thursday he wanted to wait for the county building department’s approval before starting the demolition on the 13-story building.

Moderalli said his company will work six or seven days a week to take down Realty one story at a time starting with the top floor.

Moderalli expects the job to take four to six weeks to complete.

Also, he said the plan remains to have enough of the building demolished by Aug. 2 to permit the nearby Stambaugh Building — the home of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel — and International Towers to reopen.

“That’s the goal, but we have to do it safely,” Moderalli said.

Stambaugh was closed May 28, right after the explosion, because of its proximity to Realty Tower.

International Towers, which has about 170 tenants, was evacuated June 14, four days after Youngstown city officials got a structural engineering report stating all buildings within a 210-foot radius of Realty Tower should be closed because they’re in a “collapse zone.”

Charles Shasho, Youngstown’s deputy director of public works, said the city has installed and will maintain barricades, in addition to the security fence from YO Properties, marking the “collapse zone.”

As the building demolition proceeds and the height of the building is reduced, the collapse zone will be reduced accordingly, Shasho said. It is anticipated that full removal of the collapse zone can be achieved at Finley’s discretion once the demolition reaches the fourth floor, Shasho said.

During demolition, Shasho said, there will be larger than usual amounts of truck traffic in the downtown area, demolition done “beyond traditional business hours and days,” the presence of dust, further damage to the roads and curbs in the immediate vicinity of the demolition site and relocation of barricades.

Realty’s tenants will never be able to return to their apartments. Given a list of items from tenants, Finley and three firefighters went into the building Wednesday and retrieved some personal belongings that fit into bags with dimensions of 22 inches by 14 inches by 9 inches.

The three firefighters helped with the evacuation despite their union’s executive board advising members not to go into the building because of various dangers. That included that the building isn’t structurally safe, there have been no attempts to stabilize it for more than a month, airborne asbestos particles have been identified inside the building and there are 1,000-pound pieces of concrete in the wreckage that are dangling from 1-inch rebar.

Dina Pierce, an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman, said the agency has an inspector at Realty Tower who will perform inspections throughout the scheduled demolition activities.

“Ohio regulations typically require regulated asbestos to be removed before demolitions or renovations,” she said. “In circumstances where asbestos is unable to be removed due to safety concerns before demolition, debris should be kept wet to prevent asbestos particles from becoming airborne and handled by an Ohio EPA licensed asbestos contractor.”

A June 14 preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, stated a four-person scrap-removal crew, engaged by GreenHeart Companies of Boardman — owned by Brian Angelili, who also owns YO Properties 47 LLC — was working in a basement area underneath the building’s sidewalk removing old utility lines when a crew member sawed three times into a pipe mistakenly believing it to not have natural gas in it. That caused the explosion.

The city gave GreenHeart a no-bid $140,133 contract to remove utility lines from under the sidewalk in front of Realty and relocate them to its basement as part of a long-running downtown street improvement project.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, said Thursday he sent a letter to Janet Yellen, secretary of the treasury, and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel asking that the May 28 explosion be determined to be of “catastrophic nature” and any relief payments from the Red Cross, the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley and Enbridge Gas not be taxable.

That includes reimbursements for relocation expenses, lost belongings and other personal expenses resulting from the explosion, Brown wrote in the letter.

“These payments were made to individuals who were forced to leave their homes and find alternative housing, many of whom had to relocate to nursing homes or temporary spaces like hotels,” Brown wrote.

Brown hosted a roundtable Monday in Youngstown of downtown stakeholders impacted by the explosion.

Have an interesting story? Contact David Skolnick by email at dskolnick@vindy.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.

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