A large redevelopment has been in the works over at 9th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard and today there was a large milestone: Implosion of the 8-story CU Health Sciences Center. You might be asking yourself, why implode a, seemingly, nice building? It all comes down to cost. Institutional buildings, i.e medical use, are incredibly difficult to convert into anything else so it is cheaper for a developer to knock down the building, clean up, and rebuild the site.
Our next post, on Monday, will go over all of the plans for 9th and Colorado with some great, high-resolution renderings. In this post, we are going to cover the implosion.
First let’s start with some interior photos of the building right when they were adding explosives to the structural beams. These photos were provided by Alana Watkins of VOCA Public Relations, who also invited DenverInfill to the media area to watch the implosion. Thanks Alana!
Next up, the video. We had three cameras (two video, one still photo) focused on the building to provide you with a great implosion experience. In the video, you will see the implosion in high-definition first. Then, we were able to capture it at half and quarter speed. Check it out:
Lastly, I will leave you with some still photos I took of the implosion.
Right before implosion…
…And there it goes!
The aftermath:
The 9th and Colorado redevelopment is a very exciting project and we will be covering it here on DenverInfill. Stay tuned for Monday’s post will all the details!
I’m not trying to be argumentative when asking this, but is there a reason why the building could not be repurposed?
The original plan called for reusing the building. However, if I am recalling correctly, the building contained asbestos and it was concluded that it would be too costly to clean up relative to demolishing and building a new one.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t imploding a building fist require cleaning-up/removing any asbestos?
If memory serves, this building is new enough that it was built after asbestos liability became a big problem. I would have expected it to not have contained any.
What is it about medical buildings that makes them hard to convert?
Probably the bizarre internal layout. I’d think they could be gutted though, rather than losin the whole building. Big waste to demolish it.
Very cool Ryan!!
Just like building 7 in NY!
Personally, I think this is the most unsustainable thing we can do. Demolition a perfectly good building to build another one… Talk about a waste of resources, but what do I know. Secondly, yes, anyone else planing to demolition a building would have to remediate the asbestos. Its code/law. I just went through the process for a smaller project.
But these guys/developers surely aren’t just anyone else. They know better.
One of the most amazing engineering accomplishments is being able to destroy something so precisely. Very cool!
Doubtful that there was Asbestos in this building. It was built in the early 90’s.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not buying that medical buildings are hard to repurpose. That building was basically gutted, as indicated in the first pictures, so it cant possibly have been that hard to use the shell of that building for something else. Former hospitals have been converted to apartments before but you’re telling me nothing could be done with a medical building built in the 90’s. I just don’t believe that. Completely wasteful as all the material from the former building will be sent to a landfill and more resources will be used to build something new. Not very “green” for today’s supposedly environmentally conscious society.
http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2015/08/31/implosion-debris/71491970/
Waste. The responsible thing is called “deconstruction”.
40 percent is not that much in the grand scheme of things. That means 60 percent is still going to the landfill. 100 percent of what was imploded could have easily been recycled though. It’s called adaptive reuse.
Maybe in 50 years we can watch them blow up Anschutz when they move to Elizabeth.