Penn Circle Apartments demolished in spectacular explosion
One end of the 20-story roof bowed gently to the other for two seconds, then the entire high-rise in the heart of East Liberty slowly pancaked to the ground with a crescendo of thunderclaps.
It took six seconds and 450 pounds of explosives to take the vacant Penn Circle Apartments down from the chilly gray sky shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday.
"That was great! Amazing! Absolutely fantastic!" exclaimed Gigi Walker of East Liberty, from a parking lot about two blocks away. Then, seeing the billowing light-brown cloud rushing silently outward in all directions, she added: "We're gonna get covered in dust."
Some onlookers from perimeter streets closed for the blast quickly fled the dirty cloud. Others, including some wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses, squinted through the dust at East Liberty's new skyline.
Barely one minute after the high-rise was rendered to rubble, wheel loaders headed toward the pile — a two-story mound of concrete hunks, punctuated by twisted steel. Five minutes later, several City of Pittsburgh water trucks sprayed and swept dust-caked streets near the pile.
"It went picture-perfect," said Frank Bodami, a managing partner with Titan Wrecking & Environmental. The Buffalo company spent more than a month preparing the building. It will sell the structural steel to local scrap yards and recycle the remaining materials on site as back-fill for development, he said.
Implosion subcontractor Controlled Demolition Inc., of suburban Washington, scattered 450 pounds of dynamite in 2,200 locations inside the building. The first round of blasts yesterday took out interior walls, leaving vertical "legs" supporting the 20 stories. A second round of larger blasts a minute later chopped the legs, dropping the building straight down.
Penn Circle Apartments was the last of three Section 8 high-rises in the neighborhood to be demolished within the past four years. Section 8 housing is privately developed but government-subsidized. Each of the three high-rises was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All three — including Liberty Place and East Mall — were demolished by Titan.
"I was one of the first ones to move into an apartment" in East Mall, six blocks away, Walker, who described herself as "50-ish." "I was up on the 15th floor. What a view we had! There was no balcony, but we had windows all around."
Pittsburgh demolished four public-housing high-rises in the last four years and has five occupied, according to the Pittsburgh Housing Authority.
Allegheny County has about 20 public-housing high-rises. It has torn down only one — Talbott Towers, in Braddock — since the 1980s, according to the Allegheny County Housing Authority.
Penn Circle's five-acre site at Penn Avenue beside the East Busway will be redeveloped by The Mosites Co. of Pittsburgh. National retailer Target is seeking approval for a two-level store there.
