THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 18, 1997 TAG: 9701180387
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 57 lines
Dynamiting the Maritime Tower, JCPenney and Rennert buildings in November to make room for MacArthur Center mall produced a lot of oohs and ahhs.
It also made a big mess - on the order of 295,000 cubic yards of concrete, or enough to fill 75 typical two-story, four-bedroom houses.
The less glamorous job of cleaning it up went to the same company that razed the complex, Portsmouth-based Old Dominion Demolition.
But in this instance, what came down, must go back up - most of it anyway.
Far from considering the rubble rubbish, the company will recycle most of it. Mountains of concrete debris will be pulverized and then used in the construction of MacArthur Center, to be built on the same site.
About 85 percent of the old concrete is recyclable, said Chris Scism, vice president of operations for Old Dominion Demolition.
``It helps alleviate costs of the landfill,'' he said.
It's also saving money for the group of contractors building MacArthur Center mall.
The recycled concrete, with an estimated value of $500,000, would have cost about $150,000 to haul from the site by truck, Scism said.
Old Dominion Demolition's $890,000 contract included bringing down the structures, salvaging recyclables and clearing away whatever was left.
At the site, hulking machines resemble long-necked dinosaurs with their jaw-like appendages clanking in the chalky air.
Huge excavators lord over even bigger mounds of rubble, methodically moving debris from one pile to another.
But the star of the show is the Eagle 1000 crusher, a 60-foot, two-story contraption that makes old concrete usable again. It can be hooked up to a tractor-trailer to get it from place to place.
Concrete chunks go into the machine's hopper, where an industrial-strength magnet separates them from rebar - metal rods that reinforced the concrete in its previous life.
The concrete is smashed into increasingly smaller pieces and eventually spit off a conveyor belt onto a stone pile. The stone will be used to make new concrete for the mall.
About 5,000 cubic yards of unusable stuff such as carpeting, paper products and other waste will go to the landfill, Scism said.
Although recycling has obvious environmental benefits, Scism said reusing concrete in construction within the past decade came about primarily because it was profitable.
``One man's junk is another man's treasure,'' Scism said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
In November, the Maritime Tower, JCPenney and Rennert buildings, top
photos, were razed, leaving behind 295,000 cubic yards of concrete.
Portsmouth-based Old Dominion Demolition is recycling about 85
percent of the material with a machine, above, which grinds the old
concrete into bits for use in new concrete.
KEYWORDS: MACARTHUR CENTER MALL RECYCLING