GREENWICH — Cinder blocks. Broken bricks. Rebar: The Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, reduced to rubble.
But don’t expect any kind of implosion or even a large wrecking ball. According to Luigi Romano, the town’s interim superintendent of building construction and maintenance, a large excavator with a special attachment is being used to take the existing building apart.
“They will systematically dismember the building and sort the debris into the various appropriate waste streams pending its ability to be recycled,” Romano said.
Romano said the demolition work is expected to take about six weeks.
The building has not been used for programming since early in 2022 to prepare for the demolition.
The previous internal work included removal of asbestos inside the more-than-55-year-old building that had once been used as a recreation center for Electrolux employees and their families. It was sold to the town and then turned into a civic center. Because of the age of the building, the abatement needed to be done before the actual demolition started.
Work on getting a new civic center has been going on for more than two decades and a groundbreaking for the new building is expected in the fall.
The new one-story, 35,418-square-foot building will be constructed on the existing footprint of the old civic center and will be named the Cohen Eastern Greenwich Civic Center after the town accepted a $5 million gift from The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation in exchange for naming rights.
First Selectman Fred Camillo has said there will be opportunities for more naming rights contributions to help lower the cost of the project. Overall the project is anticipated to cost north of $25 million.
This new civic center will include a full-size multi-use gymnasium with roll-out spectator seating, 8,100 square feet of multi-use event space and three 1,000-square-foot activity rooms, two of which would share a partition that could be opened up to create a larger room.
kborsuk@greenwichtime.com