By Hamish Clark
Christchurch’s Grand Chancellor Hotel is going to be demolished over 10 months - floor by floor.
The decision to deconstruct the hotel, rather than use explosives, is to ensure the safety of other buildings nearby.
The 26-storey Chancellor has been on a lean ever since the February 22 quake.
Its demolition will be the biggest carried out in New Zealand.
“Today marks a very significant step towards the clean up, revitilisation, and rebuild of the central city,” said Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee.
Demolition manager Warrick Issacs says the demolition will not be easy.
“It is the most difficult high rise demolition to take place in New Zealand.”
For three months the Grand Chancellor has sat still and silent in the central city. It has not moved a millimeter since it was stablised and pumped with concrete.
Inside, columns are cracked and splintered.
The car park on the street will be the first thing demolished. Once the car park is gone a huge crane will be hoisted to the top, with two diggers also dropped there. The hotel will then be taken apart floor by floor.
“It is going to be a cut and crane process so those diggers will break out pieces floor by floor and then crane it down to the street,” says Urban Search and Rescue engineer
Carl Devereux.
Huge diggers will then work from the street deconstructing what is left.
Fletcher Construction won the multi-million dollar tender, although Mr Brownlee will not say how much or if they were the cheapest.
“I can't answer that all I can say is that they are the most competent organisation to undertake what is an extremely complex demolition,” he says.
Disaster recover contractor Bill Johnson’s tender failed but he is not too upset.
“The difference in price they said was less than $200,000 from the top three and as I said we will sharpen our pencils for the next,” he says.
The Grand Chancellor owners say they are determined to rebuild another hotel in the central city.
“There is an amount of uncertainty that we can rebuild on this site [and] the type of building we can build but we will be reinvesting in Christchurch,” says Frank Delli Cicchi, the Grand Chancellor’s general manager.
Bringing back to life a city in desperate need of rebuilding
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