Staff photo / David Skolnick A paved parking lot sits at the site of the former Realty Tower in downtown Youngstown. The project was completed Wednesday. At right is International Towers, which had been evacuated in the aftermath of the explosion at Realty.

YOUNGSTOWN — With paving of the former Realty Tower site done, the project to demolish the downtown Youngstown building, badly damaged in a May 28 gas explosion, and fill in the location officially is over.

The paving was finished Wednesday, and all of the equipment moved off site, said Gary Moderalli, owner of Moderalli Excavating, Realty Tower’s demolition contractor.

“I’m glad it’s done,” Moderalli said Thursday. “It took a little time, but it was a good job. We’re done, 100%.”

The demolition project started July 12. The planned completion date to get the 13-story building down to four floors so nearby buildings could reopen was Aug. 2. That goal took until Aug. 19 to achieve.

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.

The entire project was supposed to take about six to eight weeks, which included hauling away the debris and filling the location with dirt and then gravel. It ended up taking nearly 11 weeks.

A May 28 gas 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 23-apartment structure, with work starting almost a month later.

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 location will be a parking lot for now, with YO Properties LLC and LY Property Management Group, which managed Realty Tower, stating the future “development of this site will be an extensive process.” In the meantime, the site will remain vacant “as we begin the lengthy process of reimagining and planning a new project of this historic site,” the companies have stated.

CITY WORK

City council is expected to consider legislation Wednesday to authorize the board of control to enter into a contract to make improvements around the former Realty Tower site.

The work on Market Street in front of the site and on East Federal Street between Market and Champion streets includes repairing the roads, sidewalks, utilities, landscaping and work to some adjacent structures. That section of East Federal Street remains closed.

The estimated cost of the work is $540,000.

But Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, said Thursday he was “pleasantly surprised” to see the area around Realty Tower isn’t as badly damaged as he anticipated by the explosion and subsequent demolition.

“We’re calling for $540,000, but we’ll only replace what we need to replace,” he said.

The goal is to finish the street paving, sidewalk and utilities work by November, Shasho said. The landscaping may have to wait until the spring, he said.

The city recently reopened northbound traffic on Market Street in front of the site.

The city’s board of control Thursday voted 3-0 to pay $259,700 for emergency work done by ProQuality Demolition of Youngstown after the explosion. City council authorized the board to pay the bill Aug. 29.

ProQuality only listed items on its bill, but didn’t include a price for any of the work.

Shasho said ProQuality did a lot of work, and the price is “reasonable.”

The board also agreed Thursday to pay $7,750 to Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown for labor and equipment needed to remove traffic signals at the Realty Tower site.

RESOURCE FAIR TODAY

The city’s Community Initiative to Reduce Violence and the United Way of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley will hold a mobile hope resource fair from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at International Towers, next to the former Realty Tower.

International Towers, which has about 170 tenants, was evacuated June 14, four days after 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 tenants didn’t start returning home until Aug. 19.

Area resource agencies will be at International Towers, 25 Market St., to provide access to resources and services to residents.