Staff photo / Ed Runyan From left, Bruce Cuevas of Youngstown, Susan Nell of Canfield and her husband James Nell watch the demolition Wednesday of the Realty Tower. Susan Nell said “This is sad for me. I came downtown all my life. I took the bus down. And to me, this is very sad. It was a beautiful building.”

YOUNGSTOWN — A larger crane with a heavier wrecking ball began smashing into the Realty Tower on Wednesday, but the project’s demolition contractor said not enough work to the downtown building will be done by Friday’s deadline.

Gary Moderalli, owner of Moderalli Excavating, said he expects to get the 13-story building down to four floors, which will enable nearby buildings to reopen, by the end of next week or possibly Aug. 12, but added, “I don’t want to promise anything.”

The initial deadline was Friday.

“Nobody knew it would be this strong,” Moderalli said Wednesday of Realty Tower, heavily damaged in a May 28 gas explosion. “Civil engineers said it would fall down, though I didn’t think so. You can’t rush it. I don’t want someone getting hurt or to rush it.”

Since demolition started July 12, Moderalli’s company has used a 90-ton, 190-foot-tall crane with a 5,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball.

But wanting to get the work done quicker, Moderalli last week rented a new crane that is 225 tons, 220 to 240 feet tall and has a 14,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball.

The equipment arrived at the Realty site in pieces Monday, was assembled with that work finished Wednesday and the crane put into use that afternoon.

“It’s blowing through the floors and shearing the beams,” Moderalli said. “We’re not going to have to cut as much. It hits the building three times, and it breaks the beam.”

The smaller wrecking ball “never broke” a beam, Moderalli said. “We had to cut them by hand. We’re making some headway, and it is substantially faster. It’s better than I expected.”

The new wrecking ball took out an entire section of the building Wednesday in a short time.

Moderalli said his company is also limited with speed because the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency requires dust created by the process to be kept wet to prevent asbestos particles from becoming airborne.

Friday’s deadline was to have the top nine floors down. It would permit the nearby Stambaugh Building — the home of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel — and International Towers, which has more than 170 tenants, to reopen.

Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, recently said while Youngstown officials want Realty down in order to reopen the two buildings, progress on the demolition is being made, and “we want it down safely and quickly.”

The initial Friday deadline was chosen because that was the date of a Y-Live concert with Tim McGraw at nearby Wean Park. Past Y-Live concerts have drawn 20,000 people. Because of the Realty explosion and planned demolition, the McGraw concert was moved to Sept. 27, 2025.

A May 28 gas explosion caused significant damage to the 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.

Despite some wanting the building to be saved, YO Properties 47 LLC, the building’s owner, said five structural engineers said Realty could potentially be stabilized, but its longevity could not be guaranteed or insured. The decision was made to demolish the building on the city’s Central Square.

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

International Towers 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.”

The biggest challenge to demolishing Realty is taking down the 12-inch-thick steel roof, Moderalli said. His crews are using cutting torches on the roof and floors should start coming down shortly, he said.

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, YO Properties 47 LLC’s managing member — 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.

TENANTS’ PROPERTY

After the May 28 explosion, tenants at the 23 Realty apartments weren’t permitted to return to their homes.

Four members of the city fire department, including Chief Barry Finley, went into the building July 10 to retrieve a list provided by the tenants of some personal belongings that fit into bags with dimensions of 22 inches by 14 inches by 9 inches. That was done after Finley declared Realty Tower an emergency demolition.

Shortly after that, Moderalli said he permitted his crew members to go into the building and take some items, including computers, televisions and other electronic equipment.

“We have the right to have everything there,” Moderalli said. “They took a few things, but in the contract it says we get it. The stuff was going to the landfill. Everything there is mine. They took a few things one day after the fire department left.”

The incident has some former tenants and city officials upset.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, said, “I would hope that people would be respectful and mindful that that’s people’s personal property. You’re carrying away someone’s memory. If you’re carrying it to a truck to cart it off, to hock it or do something else with it, you should be turning that back over to the people and trying to work with people. That’s just disgusting to watch someone’s life be carted away or blowing in the wind inside that building. People should be respectful” and “have some discretion.”

Michael Durkin, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent, said Moderalli’s company has a right to do what it wants with the items.

“If they were to smash it and take it to a landfill nobody would even be asking any questions,” he said.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown asked Moderalli to not take anything else out of Realty and he agreed. Also, items were removed on a single day, Moderalli said.

“If I knew it would be a big issue, I wouldn’t have permitted it,” Moderalli said. The tenants “have insurance money. I feel bad for the people. But my guys have workers’ comp and I have $10 million in insurance. You can’t let anyone go in there.”

Moderalli said Wednesday that between the May 28 explosion and when his crew got on the work site on June 28, people entered the building because plywood on the doors was removed.

“There was stuff missing when we went in there,” he said.

That hasn’t happened since the contractor got on site, Moderalli said.

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