In a little more than two months the demolition of the old Eaton’s department store on Portage Avenue will be complete and the construction of the MTS Centre will begin.
The manual removal of the last remaining rooftop “penthouse”, which now consists of little more than the top of the five elevator shafts on the Portage Avenue side of the building, is proving to be more labour intensive than originally anticipated. The bank of elevators was installed in 1952 as one of the periodic facelifts that continually modernized the building. The steel frame construction of the elevator shaft housing is being unbolted beam by beam. The safety of the work crew taking the steel apart dictates thorough and cautious procedures be employed to accomplish the work.
Large excavators started to chew into the steel frame and concrete slab construction of the annex this week and will complete this area of the demolition in the next two weeks.
The excavation equipment on the top of the building will move down one floor and the removal of the seventh floor walls will start after the top of the elevator shafts are dismantled.
Consult the True North website (www.truenorthproject.mb.ca) for up to date still photographs of the demolition activity. Contact True North for permission to reprint any of the posted demolition photos or to request other images of the demolition activity.
[MTS Centre Construction Demolition Archive]
