Demolition of the River City Hall building near 12th Street and Camino del Rio is well underway in Durango, and contractors say they are doing what they can to repurpose and recycle materials like wood, steel and concrete recovered from the rubble.
Durango Fire Protection District hired FCI Constructors of Durango to manage the project, which includes building a brand new downtown fire station.
Steven Stewart, project engineer with FCI, said steel and concrete and masonry materials are sorted for recycling, and everything else is sent to the landfill.
That includes foundation slabs, masonry blocks and steel columns, beams, bars, joists and other structures, he said.
“Everything else that was leftover that wasn’t the steel or concrete of some sort went to the landfill,” he said. “... They kind of separate it or sort it into two, three piles. The concrete recycling pile, steel recycling pile and then (everything else).”
The materials were sorted at the site of the former River City Hall building into large containers and then shipped to appropriate facilities. Stewart said the process took a little longer than two weeks, and large trucks were picking up and transporting loads of material every day.
EnviroTech, which specializes in road and surface treatments, transported steel from the demolition site. Staff members said on Tuesday they didn’t have a total tonnage or quantification of how much steel was moved.
Stewart said he doesn’t know the actual amounts of concrete or steel sorted and shipped away to concrete and steel recycling facilities, but he would check in with subcontractors for accurate totals.
While a new building is built at the River City Hall site, DFPD will continue operations at its downtown fire station next door. Stewart said the two buildings were built decades apart.
The fire department will expand into the building that will be built on the River City Hall site. Its current facility contains an apparatus bay for fire engines and ambulances as well as office space, break rooms and sleeping quarters.
DFPD Chief Randy Black said the project is ahead of schedule and the demolition went “exceptionally well” and faster than expected.
“We’re working on the building permit right now and as soon as we get (that) back, we’ll probably start dirt work here in a couple of weeks and hopefully get construction underway shortly,” he said.
Crews have been cleaning up the site and making sure it is ready for foundation work to begin.
Stewart said construction is slated to be complete around June 2025.
Mark Thompson, founder of Phoenix Recycling, said recycling waste on a new-build construction site is fairly straight forward – materials like steel, concrete and masonry are easy to separate.
But recycling materials on a demolition site is a different story.
Demolished materials are typically mixed and blended with other materials, he said. Wood products can include nails, concrete materials usually include rebar and wiring is difficult to separate from drywall.
The less mixing of materials, the better.
A concrete parking garage is almost 100% recyclable because it is mostly composed of concrete and steel rebar. But a “funky little house” with complicated wiring and materials could be mostly nonrecyclable.
Construction on the new fire station is occurring in two phases. The first phase, ongoing now, is expected to take 14 to 15 months to complete. In the second phase, which will take 12 to 13 months if everything goes according to plan, the current downtown fire station will be demolished and a new building for fire department administrative use will be built.
cburney@durangoherald.com
