Bovis Lend Lease

To remove a floor of 130 Liberty Street. two hydraulic jackhammers are operated remotely by workers who stand nearby. The “Braaks” break the concrete into small pieces, which fall to the floor below. There are two stairways, one of which is always to be kept open for emergency use. As the deck is broken into pieces, ironworkers in scissor lifts on the floor below cut the beams with torches. A mini crane hooks onto the structural steel and lowers it to the deck. During a pause in the chopping, a frontloader scoops up broken concrete and loads it into containers, which are lowered to ground level by crane. Cut steel, too, is lowered by crane.

It’s a new beginning of the end for the former Deutsche Bank building.

This week, crews are scheduled to start disassembling the remaining 26 floors of what was once a 41-story office tower at 130 Liberty Street.

Lawsuits, mishaps, massive cost overruns, alleged criminal misconduct and, tragically, the deaths of two firefighters have plagued the building since its mortal blow from the collapsing World Trade Center across the street. Only now, at a cost that has soared to more than $170 million, does the end appear to be in sight.

Mindful of the building’s painful past, a top Buildings Department official and the contractor overseeing the job, Bovis Lend Lease, are taking pains to satisfy the public that every safety measure is taken to prevent more careless mishaps and fires.

“We believe very strongly that we have established the safest method possible to take down this building,” said Steven Sommer, the Bovis executive in charge of the project.

That method won city approval late last month, paving the way for demolition to resume more than two years after it was halted following the blaze that took the two firefighters’ lives on Aug. 17, 2007. Since then, only decontamination of the building—completed in September—has continued.

Last month, at a public meeting hosted by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the building’s owner, Sommer presented a detailed description of how the building will be taken down. Repeatedly using terms such as “mechanically controlled demolition” and “100 percent fall protection,” he described a method in which workers remotely control jackhammers to crush concrete floors, and ironworkers, safely aboard scissor lifts, cut steel beams. At each cutting site, and on the floor below, a safety guard stands by, ready to douse a fire.

Fatma Amer, the Department of Buildings’ First Deputy Commissioner, said that seven DOB supervisors and 17 inspectors will oversee the work.

The floors being demolished, and the two floors below, are encased in fire-retardant plywood. The entire building is shrouded in a new blue fire-retardant netting.

A broken standpipe—the reason water could not get to firemen fighting the 2007 blaze—cannot go unnoticed, Sommer said. Now they are rigged with pressurized alarms.

In the meantime, LMDC is not willing to say when the work will be completed. “We expect the job to get into a rhythm but we would like to see how long the work takes on the first couple of floors,” said LMDC president David Emil.