COLUMBUS, Ind. — The Columbus Board of Public Works has suspended an order to demolish a fire-ravaged building on Fifth Street after hearing plans from a company that is working with the building’s owners to perform the demolition.
The board voted Tuesday to suspend an order to demolish the Irwin Block Building on Fifth Street that it had authorized last week pending further review of a demolition permit.
The vote came after the board heard plans to demolish the building from a representative of Indianapolis-based Casey-Bertram who attended the board’s meeting on Tuesday.
The company is working to get everything safe for crews to be on site and complying with state regulations, said Jimmy Arthur, an estimator and project manager at Casey-Bertram, who fielded questions from the board on Tuesday.
Gas and cable service to the building have already been disconnected, though Duke Energy had yet to disconnect electric service as of Tuesday morning, Arthur said.
In addition, samples taken from the building have been sent to a lab to be tested for asbestos, as required by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. The results of the tests were not yet available on Tuesday, though Arthur said he hopes to have the results by the end of the week or next week.
“Once we got all those parts and pieces, we’ll be able to get (a) crew on site and get started,” Arthur told the board on Tuesday. “I think within the next two weeks we should be on site. It’s not going to be a fast process. It will probably take several weeks. I would probably say six to eight weeks to completely do the job.”
For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Republic.
