The fall of Albert Street’s “Pigeon Palace”
History
Albert St Demolition consisted of three buildings that took up the majority of the block in CBD Auckland, New Zealand. One “Pink Building'' that was the old Food Alley down the bottom, closing its doors in 2021. The rest of this building contained residential apartments, abandoned by humans for over a decade, yet remained home to hundreds of pigeons during this time. Alongside the ugly skeleton of a 5 story grey building this became known as “Pigeon Palace''. Decorated by street kids over the years, by 2021 its time had well and truly come, for the Ward Demolition treatment.
Our Demolition commenced in November 2021, although another company had attempted to start the demolition prior, consequently the site was not in a good state when it was handed to us.
Strip Out
We kicked off the project with a floor-by-floor strip out and asbestos removal. After rigorous testing we identified asbestos paint in various locations on the pink building. The window lintels were identified as containing asbestos. Our qualified asbestos removal team came in and cut these out in whole pieces, with the concrete saw, to minimise fibre release. The team followed all asbestos removal procedures, this was safely cleared and signed off.
Strip out of the pink building was completed using 2 tonne machines. Due to the lack of space in our loadout bay we were unable to crane machines to the middle floors. To work around this we chain blocked the machines by hand between each floor as we completed it. The rubbish was sent down a hand broken shoot through each floor landing in the load out bay where our 12 tonne Hitachi sorted it and packed it into trucks to be taken to the local recycling plant.
Due to the high levels of guano (Pigeon Poo) on many of these floors, we treated these areas with similar techniques to that of asbestos contamination. The diseases you can catch from inhaling guano can be just as deadly, so we ensured we took every precaution to eliminate this risk. We wore full suits and facemasks whenever we were working on these floors and did not continue until the contamination was completely cleared.
Stage 2
Once we got to level 7 we were able to take the roof off, this contained native timber, which we salvaged to be reused. At this point we were able to back prop 3 floors below and crane up larger machines. Including our New Zealand first, brand new, DXR 300 Robot. This was a game changer in breaking out the top of lift shafts and other high-risk areas, such as leading edges and floor slabs. The powerful machine was able to break beams in half the time as the 3 tonne excavator, while operators remained at a safe distance.
As the sidewalk sat directly below our building our methodology included floor-by-floor demolition, first taking the pink building down to 5 floors, then stepping it out both buildings, either side to level 2, in preparation for the high reach. During this process the street facing sides of the building were lined with scaffolding and a gantry walkway. We wrapped the scaffold with scrim to contain the small debris and built plywood protection 3 floors in advance of each section to catch any larger debris. This was extremely effective, all our hard work paid off and the footpaths below remained rubble free.
Lack of Structural Connectivity
An old newspaper wedged in the crumbly concrete on the 4th floor of Albert St’s Old Food Alley building reads “NZ Herald, Friday, January 17, 1964”. Given we also found scallop shells built into this concrete we assume this building is at least 60 years old. Surprises were the theme of this project, in demolition that’s never a good thing. Head operator Zoran, who is about as old and experienced as this building, was surprised to find zero rebar in a 7 story high, street-facing column. With many other beams and columns unattached by rebar, it’s no surprise that Zoran claims this is one of the scariest buildings he’s ever demolished. The building severely lacked structural connectivity.
When demolishing columns with small machines typical procedure is to break back enough concrete to expose the rebar, gas cut the exterior strands so that when you pull on the column, it goes in the direction you designed it to. So you can imagine the fright Zoran got when he discovered there was in fact zero rebar holding the concrete column up. From 40 odd years of demolition experience Zoran could tell by the cracks that something wasn’t quite right when he first started breaking this initial column, so he stopped to investigate with more caution.
The column was supported by the rebar that was remaining from the top beams at this stage so the team added extra strops for support before proceeding slowly with hand breakers. It was quickly evident there was no rebar to be found. Extra precautions had to be taken from that moment onwards to pull every one of these columns down. Two Turfa winches were attached to the columns so when Zoran pulled the columns in they would go in the direction we needed them to. The interesting part was that some columns had rebar in them and some did not, we had to treat everyone as if it did not, as there was no pattern. You can see an example of this in the video provided.
There’s another example portrayed in our video (above), on the top floor of the 7-story pink building facing that of the 5-story grey. Not one of the floors’ columns were attached by rebar to the beam, meaning when we went to pull it over, it slid off, almost like it was just sitting there. Fortunately we knew what to expect at this point, the unexpected. As standard practice we had spotters preventing entry to the grey building in case it were to fall the wrong way. Although this was an increased likelihood, our experienced operator managed to pull it all inwards.
The grey buildings’ structure was built just as weird. The slab was only 100 mm thick and held together by thin, chicken mesh type rebar. These had to be shore loaded before we could put any machines on it. This was hugely contrasting to when we broke into the beams, they contained about 60mm thick rebar, with 6 of these in each beam. These were tricky to cut with the shear, meaning we had to gas cut them all, which was challenging in itself.
Separation of Historic Building
An added technical element of the demolition included separating a heritage building, set for restoration at a later date. The 5 story high structure was connected to both the pink and grey buildings. Made entirely out of wood, we were concerned for its structural integrity and proposed we keep a bay of the concrete grey building to prop up the shared brick wall; our client was pleased with this solution. Separating the pink building held a higher level of difficulty as the street facing portion contained a stairwell. Meaning the saw had to be set up and operated off the scaffold. One thing that aided this process was the pink buildings beams were only attached by two small rebar hooks, this made them easy to break away.
Rolling in the High Reach
As we stepped down the floors we filled the basement with the concrete and loaded out the steel to be recycled. The crushed concrete worked as a pad in our loadout bay, so that we could utilise our smaller high reach, which better fit the tight space. We then demolished both the grey and pink building and followed the same process for the 3 story car park building. It was connected to a brand new building and required live separation. We gently demolished it floor by floor to finish off a very successful project.
The Team
We are a family business founded and managed by Peter Ward, all three of his children were involved in some aspect of this job. Dalton Ward, the oldest, was the site supervisor and high reach operator. Bayleigh Ward, Peter’s daughter, was involved from hands-on work to machine operation. Tyler Ward, the youngest, popped in for a few days while he was between projects to operate the DXR 300 Robot. The rest of the main team consisted of Jacob Toupin who ran the strip out, Zoran Prijic head operator on the floor by floor, Hayden Dixon another top operator, Richie Keene leading hand, Michael Harrison head Asbestos removal expert, Daniel Pryor and Carlos Paovale were the top labourers. Our team did an exceptional job on this project and deserves recognition.
