The weather played a role for the first time this week in the demolition work that has already taken place at the old Eaton’s department store building. Gusting winds slowed down the progress on the removal of the cornice and the walls above the eighth floor of the building along the Portage Avenue front.
The other major activity this week was work toward dismantling and taking down the walkway bridge across Donald Street from the Eaton’s store to the Somerset Building. Donald Street between Portage and Graham was closed to traffic from 7:00 pm until 11:00 pm each evening as the interior of the bridge was gutted in order to reduce the weight of the structure before taking it apart to lower it to the ground. The current schedule calls for the street to be closed between the hours of 6:00 am and 12 noon on Saturday, October 5th to completely remove the bridge.
In the next week the demolition equipment that has been working on the eighth floor will be lowered by crane down to the seventh floor and the process of removing the walls around the building at that height will commence. As the demolition gets closer to the ground the work becomes easier and each successive level of the building will come down more quickly. The removal of the walls above the seventh floor should take one week to complete.
[MTS Centre Construction Demolition Archive]
