Sports fans tend to use stadiums and arenas as geographic markers—places with familiar names they see on TV regularly that distinguish their host cities as top-tier American destinations.

Thus, when a stadium reaches the end of its life, it marks a demolition project that gains national attention. This is only amplified if implosion is used as a technique in any such project.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the Detroit-based Adamo Group was at the center of attention for not just one such project, but for being the lead contractor on the implosion and demolition of two former football stadiums taken down within weeks of each other.

In November 2017, an implosion brought down the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta while the following month a series of charges brought down the top mechanical ring of seats in the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, near Detroit.

GOING OUT WITH A BANG

Richard M. Adamo, president of the 54-year-old family business, says stadiums are prime candidates for implosion.

Adherence to a tight schedule can provide one reason to favor implosion, which was the case with the Georgia Dome. Additionally, despite the noise and dust associated with an implosion, the technique also is much safer for workers, Adamo says.

“These structures are very conducive to implosion because of their design—their bowl shape,” Adamo says. “Most of them are in the open, and from a safety standpoint, it’s quickly on the ground.”

Thus, once the dust has cleared from an implosion, workers operating excavators, loaders and other mobile equipment are dealing with materials at ground level that do not present the possibility of falling from above, as would be the case if they were “chewing” away at upper-level seating.

The two stadiums may each have hosted an implosion, but they did not present identical challenges for the Adamo Group. The Georgia Dome project involved not only a tight timeline, but also a tight squeeze relative to nearby structures.

“The Georgia Dome had two active structures next to it—the brand-new Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Georgia World Congress Center,” Adamo says. The new stadium was 83 feet away from the old one, he notes, but “the Congress Center was merely 6 to 8 inches away in certain areas.”

He continues, “To top it off, the MARTA [Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transit Authority] underground train system ran right between the two stadiums.”

A controlled implosion, however, allowed the Georgia Dome to come down without harming its neighbors while also adhering to a tight time schedule required by the property’s owners and developers.

“The intent was to start this project in March or April 2017 with a mid-July implosion,” says Adamo. However, that schedule was pushed back by the owner, he notes.

Despite the delayed demolition start, the project's end date never changed. “We had to blast it and immediately clean it up—that’s one factor why implosion was chosen over conventional demolition. Conventional methods would have taken a lot longer; you could double or triple your timeline with conventional equipment,” Adamo says.

Conditions were thus in place for an implosion of the Georgia Dome that took place on Nov. 20, 2017. The implosion was broadcast live on local television.

The Pontiac Silverdome project involved different considerations, says Adamo, with neither the tight timeline nor nearby buildings that complicated the Georgia Dome work. “We didn’t have as much time pressure, but from a safety standpoint, it made sense to use implosion to bring down the top ring,” he says.

The Silverdome implosion was scheduled for Dec. 3—just two weeks after the Georgia Dome blast. However, the Sunday implosion did not fully detonate, resulting in a second attempt the following day that did succeed in bringing down the Silverdome’s upper bowl of seats.

For Adamo Group, the implosions marked just one step in each project’s lengthy journey from start to finish.

SIZABLE HARVEST

Before planned explosions brought attention to both stadium projects, Adamo Group crews were busy inside both the Georgia Dome and the Silverdome harvesting objects and materials for recycling.

Some preimplosion site work involved preparing the stadiums for the big blasts. The implosions were performed directly by specialty subcontractors, says Adamo, and Adamo Group worked in cooperation with them to do any precutting or drilling of spaces to host explosives.

“We basically did prep work based on their blast plans; we gutted everything out for them,” Adamo says.

In Atlanta, Adamo Group “did a lot of prep work before the blast—selective demo—to gut the building and get materials of value,” Adamo says. Georgia Dome's main tenant, the Atlanta Falcons, maintained ownership of anything with “trademark restrictions,” Adamo says, and the owner also claimed some electro-mechanical equipment. “The remaining things become property of the contractor. All salvage was our responsibility, including both ferrous and nonferrous metals,” Adamo says.

The Georgia Dome’s structural steel, reinforcing bar and steel-beamed roof will all make its way to scrap yards in Atlanta, Adamo says. Much of the estimated 170,000 tons of concrete will be recycled and used on-site for the planned 13-acre urban park and a 1,000-room hotel.

The tight timeline means sizable crews have been working around the clock at the job site. “We have crews there six days a week, around the clock, with about 20 workers on each shift,” Adamo says. He says there are about 16 excavators and two wheel loaders on the site, running attachments that include pulverizers, breakers, shears, and crusher jaws with shears to cut rebar and magnets. Torch cutters also are on-site to sever large steel beams.

The Silverdome will yield a similar amount of concrete—Adamo estimates 150,000 tons—but less structural steel, since it was built with an inflatable tarp roof. The Silverdome’s vacancy also contributed to its lower metals content.

“The building was vacant and open to the elements for several years, so vandals and scrappers had been in and out of that building more times than I can count,” Adamo says. He says there are videos posted online “of people doing stunt bicycle riding” in the vacant structure. Subsequently, “nonferrous materials are long gone, taken by looters.”

Adamo Group did have access to a portion of the remaining seating, some of which it was able to sell to interested buyers.

Without a replacement building schedule in place in Pontiac, Adamo Group is clearing the site at a slower pace compared to Atlanta. “We operate there with a crew of about six people, five days per week. We are using similar types of equipment as in Georgia: excavators with shears and magnets, and a loader. All aggregate materials are staying on-site, and our end scope is to grade it in dirt and cap it off to have it ready for redevelopment.”

Adamo Group’s activities in Atlanta are scheduled to wrap up by mid-February 2018, Adamo says. In Michigan, the smaller crew will work into the third quarter of 2018, with the parties involved eyeing a completion date in September or October.

BUSY BUT BITTERSWEET

The culmination of the two stadium implosions within two weeks of each other capped a hectic 2017 for Adamo and the Adamo Group. Despite the hectic schedule, Adamo says he still had time to reflect on the journey the company has taken and on the memory of his father, who founded the company, and his older brother John, who led the firm for many years.

“The Silverdome was the last project my brother and I really worked on together,” Adamo says, noting that research on the bidding for that project was already well underway when his brother passed away in December 2015.

Following the death of then-CEO John T. Adamo Jr., who had taken over the reins of the company from John Sr. (who founded it in 1964), Richard was in charge of the family business, which was enjoying growth and forward momentum established by his older brother.

He says the good memories and hard work of his father and older brother were not lost in the swirl of activities in late 2017. “It was bittersweet because of that. At the Georgia Dome site that Sunday morning, I was extremely emotional because of the magnitude and what was going on. I pushed the button, and I said, ‘Here’s for you, dad and John.’”

Recounting some of the major events that took place at both stadiums, Adamo reflects, “Now, a little demo company out of Detroit is part of this history. In one year, we were involved in two major demolition implosions that caught the attention of the U.S. public.”

The reach of the projects even extended beyond the U.S., Adamo says, who notes that he received messages of congratulations from business contacts he has throughout Europe after the implosions.

As Adamo Group heads into 2018, work at both sites will keep the firm busy, but so too will new projects (such as the dismantling of a large hospital campus in Michigan) and the ongoing effort to bid on the next set of jobs to fill the schedule for the growing family business.

The future may well include more high-profile stadium or arena projects. “We’re actively pursuing other venues; we’ve got our feelers out,” Adamo says. “We’re hoping that with the success of these two projects, other ones come down the line.”

Overall, Adamo says he is “optimistic that the future will be bright for us. I think 2018 is going to be active. This economy is going like gangbusters, and right here in downtown Detroit, there is a lot of demolition and construction activity. It should be a respectable year.”

The author is an editor with the Recycling Today Media Group and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.

The Aluminum Association updates green building guidelines

The Aluminum Association, Arlington, Virginia, has released the 2017 version of “Aluminum in Green Buildings—A Guide to Environmental Declarations” as part of its series of guidelines for the building and construction market sector.

The association says the updated guidelines detail how life cycle assessments and environmental product declarations are awarded for green building credits in major rating systems, and what architects and designers can do to meet the rating system’s requirements.

The guidelines, created by the Aluminum Association, were drafted to reflect the latest development of environmental declaration requirements in major green building codes and rating systems. Examples of these codes and systems include:

• LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) v4;
• Green Globes 2013;
• IgCC 2012; and
• CALGreen 2010/2012

The guide is available at the association’s website at www.aluminum.org.

“Our industry is committed to utilizing aluminum’s many benefits to advance sustainability efforts in the building and construction sector,” Heidi Brock, president and CEO of The Aluminum Association, says. “The guide’s updates will help stakeholders in every stage of the process make informed decisions regarding environmental declarations as well as what aluminum can bring to the process.”

The guide looks at different stakeholders along the building product manufacturing value chain and how roles and responsibilities vary for each when it comes to meeting credit requirements using LEED v4, the latest version of the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system, as an illustration.

The Aluminum Association says the updated guidelines provide stakeholders further information crucial to producing meaningful declarations on aluminum building products.

The association released the first set of guidelines, “A Guide to Green Building Development,” in 2015 at Greenbuild in Washington, which focused on guiding stakeholders to better use aluminum’s material properties and life cycle characteristics to maximize green building credits.

The Aluminum Association represents aluminum production and jobs in the U.S., ranging from primary production to value-added products to recycling, as well as suppliers to the industry.

Golden 1 Center wins GPM award

The Sacramento Kings and Golden 1 Center, in Sacramento, California, received the award for Project of the Year from Green Project Management (GPM), headquartered in Detroit. The award is given to an organization that GPM says demonstrates the impact and relevance of sustainability and project success from both a process and objective perspective.

“We are humbled to receive this international honor,” Vivek Ranadivé, Sacramento Kings owner and chairman, says. “We believe businesses have a responsibility to serve as agents of change and we are proud that Golden 1 Center has been recognized as a model of sustainability.”

GPM created the Sustainability Awards to highlight the successes of individuals and organizations from around the world through the implementation of sustainable practices, it says. Earlier last year, Golden 1 Center and the Sacramento Kings earned international recognition as Sport for Climate Action by Beyond Sport, an organization based in London that promotes the use of sports to address social issues. During the seventh annual Green Sports Alliance summit at Golden 1 Center, Ranadivé presented his vision for sports teams to leverage technology to identify new solutions to fight climate change, calling for the sports industry and community to continue to set higher standards for action and environmental awareness around the world.

Golden 1 Center is 100 percent solar powered and achieved the Washington-based U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum certification. A food program sources 90 percent of the venue’s ingredients within 150 miles of the arena. To close the food cycle, Golden 1 Center has partnered with a local food bank to distribute unserved food items through the community and with a local organics program that develops fertilizers for the farms that supply its products to the arena.

Golden 1 Center also earned the Sports Business Journal’s Facility of the Year award for these efforts.

• 99 percent of demolition materials, nearly 101,000 tons, recycled and diverted from landfills;
• reducing travel-related greenhouse gas emissions per attendee by 36 percent by 2020;
• a 30 percent reduction in energy use above California Title 24 code requirement;
• a 45 percent reduction in use over California code;
• more than 28,650 pounds of usable food has been diverted to local food banks;
• fan-donated shoes recycled into the team’s court; and
• partnerships with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), New York City, and the Green Sports Alliance (GSA), Portland, Oregon.

University of Rhode Island facility earns LEED certification

The Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences at the University of Rhode Island (URI), Kingston, Rhode Island, has been certified LEED Gold by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), Washington.

The 134,623 square-foot center’s certification is the 11th for buildings at URI.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is a third-party certification system for the design, construction and operation of green buildings.

“The key to LEED Gold for Beaupre is the HVAC equipment and system,” Mark Fisher, senior project manager for Keough Construction Management Inc., Walpole, Massachusetts, and the buyer’s representative for URI on the project, says. “Because this is a chemistry facility, the HVAC system must bring in 100 percent clean, new air on a constant basis and it must fully exhale the old air. The system cannot recycle the air, which makes managing energy consumption a challenge.”

“LEED Gold is very impressive for a science building, and we have to credit the architect, Wilson Architects Inc. of Boston, for designing such a great teaching, learning and research center that also reflects the value the university places on sustainability,” URI Director of Capital Projects Paul DePace says.

The building has 172 exhaust hoods and 171 exhaust snorkels that expel hazardous fumes from the building.

Despite the ventilation demands, the system is designed to capture energy used to heat the building in the winter and cool it in the summer. In addition, the exhaust hoods are equipped with sensors that activate them when the teaching and learning laboratories are in use and power them down when they are idle.

“This technology helps us achieve big energy savings,” DePace says. All lighting in the building is governed by sensors so lights go off when no one is in an office, lab or lecture hall. High-efficiency LED lights illuminate the building’s exterior.

The building was constructed using locally sourced materials to minimize fuel consumption related to shipping.

“We used sustainable materials throughout the building,” DePace says. “For instance, we used certified sustainable wood products, and all of the aggregate materials—stone, concrete and processed gravel—were obtained from nearby sources. All construction waste materials were recycled.”

The university required the contractor to segregate all debris so none of it wound up in the Rhode Island Resource Recovery landfill in Johnston, Rhode Island.

The project also includes open space and a rain garden that collects and filters storm runoff before it enters the White Horn Brook watershed.

The $68 million Beaupre Center opened in September 2016. Funded in large part by a $61 million general obligation bond issue approved by Rhode Island voters in the 2010 election, the facility bears the name of alumnus Richard E. Beaupre.

The contractor that constructed the LEED-certified building was Bacon Construction of Rumford, Rhode Island.

Silverdome implosion fails

The Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit failed to implode during an initial attempt on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017. Contracted demolition company Adamo Group, Detroit, says the cord that was meant to set off shape charges was tampered with.

The loud explosion heard by the crowd watching the demolition was what Rick Cuppetilli, executive vice president of Adamo, calls a “kicker charge.” The eight shape charges were meant to cut the steel, but did not detonate. A second attempt on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, succeeded in bringing down the upper deck of the stadium.

Cuppetilli says limited time to prepare for the implosion and possible vandalism were two potential culprits for the failed first explosion. Trespassers were caught on-site Dec. 1, 2017, and were chased out by police and security.

Adamo used 300 pounds of dynamite for the attempted Silverdome implosion and had three days to prepare for the initial attempt.

Veit & Co. names new president

Rogers, Minnesota-based Veit & Co. has announced Daniel M. White as the new president of the firm. The announcement was made by Vaughn A. Veit, CEO of the company.

White has been an advisor to Veit and his specialty contracting and waste management companies for nearly a decade, initially as outside legal counsel and then as in-house general counsel beginning in 2016, according to a Veit & Co. news release. In June 2017, Veit named White president of his VONCO Waste Management Campus companies and Veit Disposal Systems.

“A highly analytical, trusted, and decisive leader, we are thrilled to announce that Dan White is the new president of Veit & Co.,” Veit says. “As one who is quick to grasp complex issues, Dan is skilled at helping our employees solve problems and excel in their roles. Dan understands my vision for our companies, and I am confident that we will see continued success under his leadership as Veit & Co. enters its 90th year. We have been taking care of business since 1928. Dan will make sure that we continue to take care of business.”

The Veit family of companies (which was profiled by Construction & Demolition Recycling in 2008) has more than 700 employees and offers specialty contracting services including earthwork, foundations, demolition, underground utilities, hydraulic dredging and industrial cleaning. VONCO and Veit Disposal Systems provide roll-off containers and transport, recycle and dispose of construction and demolition debris and industrial solid waste.

University of Nebraska dormitories come down in implosion

Two dormitories at the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus came down in a 10-second implosion Dec. 22, 2017. The two towers had been part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus since 1963.

Thousands of small explosions were simultaneously triggered to weaken the columns supporting the 13-story towers. Once the supports came down, the dorms’ weight caused their iron supports to collapse onto a space that once held a shared dining hall.

The university began preparing for the implosion in May 2017 while removing asbestos from the building by removing windows, heavy furniture and any mechanical parts of the dorms that could become projectiles during the implosion. Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), Phoenix, Maryland, worked on rigging the implosion site for weeks.

CDI used jackhammers and drills to damage internal support structures, such as elevator shafts and stairwells and drilled holes into the 64 columns supporting each floor. Each hole drilled in the columns of the basement and first floor structures were fitted with 1 ½ sticks of dynamite and holes in the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and 11th floors were fitted with ½ stick.

A chain-link fence and geotextile fabric were wrapped around each of the columns to contain larger debris and catch dust and particulates. The lower floors were also lined with curtains made from the materials to minimize the amount of debris thrown out during the implosion. Shipping containers supplied by Ark Wrecking, headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were fitted with netting to stop debris from scattering while being hauled away.

The charges were wired with redundancies to avoid what Grant Watson, the university’s construction manager, calls a “Pontiac Silverdome situation.” The detonation was triggered from across the street.

Once the implosion was done, piles of rubble between 20 feet and 35 feet high remained for crews to clean up. The demolition debris was sent to a local landfill.

Contamination detected at Hanford Site

Two vehicles leaving the Hanford Site, a nuclear cleanup site in Benton County, Washington, allegedly spread low-level contamination when leaving the site Dec. 15, 2017. The vehicles returned to the site Dec. 18, 2017, and were found to be contaminated with radioactive waste.

Several other areas near the demolition site, known as the Plutonium Finishing Plant, were contaminated as well, including near the trailers, on a jersey barrier, on a vehicle hood, on the ground and on a trash can.

No contamination was detected inside the vehicles at the time of reporting. The employees who drove the cars were asked to remain in offices Dec. 18, 2017, until further surveys were conducted.

Six demolition workers had found elevated contamination readings on their lapel monitors the week of Dec. 10, 2017. The workers are undergoing bioassays to see if contamination has permeated into their bodies. Results from the bioessays are expected to return in a month.

Demolition of the plant was on hold and the contractor working on the project says that work will be restarted when the possible contamination issues are fixed.

The Plutonium Finishing Plant was used to make hockey puck-sized plutonium buttons for bombs since 1949. Work to demolition the plant has been ongoing since 2016, and is expected to be complete in January.

Webster Hall set for interior demolition

Permits were filed for the interior demolition of Webster Hall in New York City, Dec. 11, 2017. The new owners of the venue plan to renovate the space.

Martinez & Johnson Architecture, Washington, is slated to work on the renovations. The firm also worked on renovations of the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn and the Boston Opera House in Massachusetts.

Webster Hall closed Aug. 10, 2017. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, Brooklyn, New York, and The Bowery Presents, New York City, bought Webster Hall from the Ballinger family in the spring for $35 million.

The new owners plan to drop the club nights previously held at the venue and focus on live music. The renovations will not be complete until 2020.

Volkswagen Group of America receives award

Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations LLC in Chattanooga, Tennessee, received the Outstanding Achievement in Solid Waste Management award at the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s Annual Environmental & Energy Awards.

The award recognizes Volkswagen Chattanooga for its efforts in recycling concrete debris created during the expansion of the Chattanooga factory for the midsize SUV, the Volkswagen Atlas, ultimately saving the company more than $800,000.

“We were faced with the possibility of creating tons and tons of waste in addition to the cost of hauling it all to a landfill,” Anthony Lytle, construction planning specialist for Volkswagen Chattanooga, says. “Once we came up with a solution that provided an opportunity to not only recycle the concrete, but also reuse the material on-site, the decision to take this path was easy.”

Throughout the midsize SUV expansion process, nearly 37,000 tons of concrete were excavated from the site, potentially creating more than 18,300 cubic yards of landfill space. The company’s construction and environmental team developed a plan to crush and reuse the waste concrete for on-site infrastructure and expansion efforts.

Concrete debris was hauled to an on-site crusher and processed into various sizes to be used throughout the facility. Seventy-five percent was used as beds for roll compacted concrete (RCC) parking and roadways. The remaining concrete continues to be repurposed for gravel patrol roads, walking paths, landscaping, and erosion control.

The Volkswagen Chattanooga manufacturing facility began production in April 2011. It currently builds the Volkswagen Passat sedan and the Volkswagen Atlas, which went on sale in May of 2017.

Volkswagen Chattanooga employs 3,500 team members. The company says it is the first car factory worldwide with a LEED Platinum certification. It is also certified to international standards for energy management (ISO 50001), environmental management (ISO 14001) and quality management (ISO 9001).