Debris from the demolition of the Realty Tower building, badly damaged in a May 28 gas explosion, is loaded Wednesday into a truck to haul to a landfill in Stark County. All of the debris from the site should be removed by the middle of next week, according to the demolition contractor.

YOUNGSTOWN — The contractor in charge of demolishing the Realty Tower, badly damaged in a May 28 gas explosion, expects to have all of the debris from the downtown Youngstown site removed no later than the middle of next week.

Besides the debris, all that is left from the former 13-story apartment building on the city’s Central Square is the remains of four floors of the staircase.

The staircase should be down this weekend, said Gary Moderalli, owner of Moderalli Excavating, Realty’s demolition contractor.

“The stairway will come down easy, but it’s in the way of removing the debris,” he said. “We’ll drop it over the weekend. As soon as we take enough trash out, we’ll pull it down. The trash is going pretty quick. Hauling is going well.”

The plan after the debris is removed is to fill the spot where the building sat with dirt and then gravel to make it a parking lot — at least temporarily.

There are about 150 to 200 truckloads of debris to haul away, Moderalli said. Each truck can hold 35 to 40 cubic yards.

The initial plan was to use 10 trucks per day with the Stark County landfill, where the debris is being hauled permitting two loads per truck per day.

But Moderalli said he’s used 20 trucks per day, each going twice to the landfill, since Tuesday and 16 trucks, each going twice to the landfill, on Aug. 30.

All of the debris could be gone as soon as Friday, Monday or Tuesday, Moderalli said, but it will be no later than the middle of next week.

Enough demolition work was finished Aug. 19 — getting the former 13-story building down to four floors — to permit the nearby DoubleTree by Hilton hotel and International Towers to reopen two days later.

The Stambaugh Building, home to the hotel, 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.”

The explosion caused significant damage to Realty Tower on East Federal Street. The blast killed Akil Drake, who worked at the Chase Bank on the building’s ground floor, and injured nine others. Building owner YO Properties 47 LLC decided June 17 to demolish the downtown structure, and Moderalli began that work July 12.

The initial deadline to demolish all but four floors was Aug. 5.

The entire project was projected initially to take about six weeks. Friday will be eight weeks.

Moderalli said the building proved to be a challenge to demolish and he wanted it down as safely and quickly as possible.

Moderalli’s company first used a 90-ton, 190-foot-tall crane with a 5,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball when demolition started. But Moderalli said that piece of equipment “never broke” a beam.

The company moved July 31 to a rented crane that was 225 tons, 240 feet tall and had a 14,000-pound horseshoe-shaped wrecking ball that sped up the demolition process.

REALTY SITE

FUTURE

After the debris is removed and the stairwell taken down, it will take a week or two to fill the location with fill and then gravel to turn the location into a temporary parking lot, Moderalli said.

“We don’t want to have dirt and then a big mess so we’re putting in a gravel parking lot,” he said. “They may asphalt it later.”

YO Properties and LY Property Management Group, which managed Realty Tower, said the future “development of this site will be an extensive process. In the interim, the site will be leveled and will remain vacant as we begin the lengthy process of reimagining and planning a new project of this historic site.”

The companies added, “It is with hope for the future that we remain committed to the Realty Tower site. We have every intention of continuing our legacy of paying homage to Youngstown’s history while moving it toward a vibrant future.”

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.

A final report is expected to take one to two years to complete.

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. That was done because Angelili heads both companies and it was easier to have GreenHeart do the work than to hire someone else, Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, has said.

Drake’s mother and sister, tenants at International Towers and former residents at Realty have filed lawsuits against YO Properties, LY, GreenHeart, Enbridge Gas Ohio LLC — the area’s natural gas company — and several of its sister companies.

The streets on and near the Realty site were heavily damaged because of the explosion and the demolition work.

The city wants to have that work start this month and be done by November, Shasho said.

That work includes fixing the street, sidewalk, an island, and curbs and lights that were damaged, Shasho said.

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