NDA CONVENTION: Nashville Success Story

The mayor of Nashville, Tenn., personally welcomed attendees of the National Demolition Association (NDA) Annual Convention to that city, and commented on the professional job they did on a prominent Music City project.

Mayor Bill Purcell thanked the demolition industry for the professional manner in which it demolished the city’s former waste-to-energy plant earlier this decade and then recycled some 98 percent of the resulting materials.

The city was guided by consulting firm Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc. (GBB), Fairfax, Va., in the demolition of the near-downtown structure to make way for a new stadium for the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team.

Purcell said the city’s goal from the outset was for the project to be “clean and lean and green,” and that the city government, along with GBB Inc. and five contractors, was able to meet that goal.

The project, budgeted for $2.4 million, was completed for a net cost of just $115,000 after the sale of materials and equipment. “That was a lot of hard work by a lot of people,” Purcell told NDA Convention attendees. “The members of your association were involved all along the way.”

At a session later on during the Convention, Bob Brickner of GBB Inc. demonstrated how steel and other metals provided revenue while crushed concrete was marketed to other municipal agencies. Additionally, some $980,000 worth of equipment from inside the former waste-to-energy plant was marketed via Internet auctions.

The NDA’s Annual Convention took place at the Gaylord Opryland complex in Nashville in late March.