Shuttered last April, the old Washington Convention Center has one more show to stage -- its own destruction.
At 7:30 a.m. tomorrow, after the blare of a warning siren, a series of synchronized explosions is planned to kick out about 450 of the structure's concrete and steel columns, causing the roof to fall 50 feet to the surface and most of the walls to come down on top of it in a 20-second flurry.
Officials and visitors tour the gutted center. Crews spent weeks removing drywall, masonry and other materials that cause dust.
(Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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Some dust, rubble and two surviving remnants -- a 60-foot-tall section on the south side and a loading dock wall on the north -- are all that will remain of an 800,000-square-foot building that was the fourth-largest convention center in the nation when it opened 22 years ago.
"It is really very little explosion -- it's a lot of gravity," said Terry W. Anderson, 53, executive vice president of the Wrecking Corp. of America, the Alexandria-based demolition company leading the convention center's deconstruction.
The demolition of the two-level concrete building at 900 Ninth St. NW is the first implosion in downtown Washington in decades. The last one was in January 1974, when nearly 600 pounds of dynamite brought down the 10-story Capital Garage at 13th Street and New York Avenue NW. Not even a window pane was reported damaged on nearby buildings in the immediate aftermath.
Convention center officials and demolition experts said they are expecting an equally incident-free implosion this time. They are anticipating less dust than would be generated in similar implosions and no major property damage. But the implosion of a building a few blocks from the White House has caused officials to take numerous precautions.
Anderson said he cannot discuss the quantity and type of explosives for security reasons, other than to say that shape charges will be used to cut steel columns and nitroglycerine-based explosives will fracture the concrete pillars. The final primary wiring will not take place until the morning of the implosion, and the project's demolition experts have met with local and federal authorities to discuss their plans.
"We are aware of the event," said Tom Mazur, a spokesman for the Secret Service, which has offices nearby. "We are going to be monitoring when it takes place."
District police will oversee a safety perimeter around the building tomorrow morning, restricting pedestrian and vehicle traffic up to two blocks away. The perimeter will shut parts of about a dozen downtown streets for anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, convention center officials said. Traffic will be restricted on Massachusetts Avenue and on Seventh Street starting at 7:15 a.m., and cars on other surrounding streets will be restricted from about 5:30 to 9:30 a.m., possibly longer.
Buildings adjacent to the convention center are not required to be evacuated, but during the implosion, Anderson said, his company has asked property managers to keep people away from the sides of their buildings facing the site. In addition, officials have asked managers of adjacent buildings to reduce the number of workers on the premises as much as possible.
The Renaissance Washington D.C. Hotel, directly across Ninth Street, is keeping about 300 rooms facing the building vacant and clearing the lobby for 10 minutes leading up to the implosion, said general manager Brad Edwards. Edwards said the hotel will have a little fun with the event and host a morning "implosion party" at its sports bar for guests. Another party will take place at the new Convention Center at Mount Vernon Square, as city officials, nearby business owners, convention center employees and others plan to watch from behind the windows of the grand ballroom balcony at the edge of the safety zone.
Convention center officials are encouraging the public to watch the event on television instead of coming to the area. "If people wanted to come down, they would be restricted to outside the safety zone, which gives them a very limited view of the implosion," said Tony Robinson, spokesman for the Washington Convention Center Authority. He said the implosion will be carried live on local and national television.
The demolition will mark the passing of a bit of Washington's recent past -- an imposing beige fort of a building that symbolized the no-frills look of downtown architecture in the 1980s and hosted a long list of guests that included presidents, interior designers, Baptists and radiologists.
Officially opened Dec. 10, 1982, the structure -- with its dark-glass windows and rows of loading docks facing New York Avenue NW -- was never a darling of critics and architects. "It always just seemed to be a big, dead lump there," said Don Hawkins, a District architect and co-curator of a National Building Museum exhibit on Washington as symbol and city.
