Demolition work on Courthouse Square to begin next week
Former Washington County office building to be razed by the end of the year
Mike Jones
The demolition of Courthouse Square is scheduled to begin next week, with crews starting the tedious work of removing lights bulbs, toilets and pipes from the inside of Washington County’s former government office building.
Washington County Commission Chairman Nick Sherman said county workers have been preparing the building for demolition for weeks, transferring the remaining row offices to other locations and removing office furniture and equipment.
With the building now vacant after the sheriff’s office moved out in April, the contractor can begin the “hand work” of taking out light bulbs from every room in the seven-story building – since they can’t be dumped in a landfill – and removing the toilets and precious metals that can be salvaged or recycled. That intricate work will take about a month to perform and lead to the demolition of the tower and parking garage beginning later this summer.
“That’s a slower process, but once that’s all out of there, the wrecking ball swings,” Sherman said. “Once that’s done, that will start the real work of demolition.”
The county recently placed construction cones and signs around the site warning pedestrians not to enter the area, and also advising people to go to the Crossroads Center building across West Beau Street for most county services. While the public might not notice work being done over the next month since crews will strictly be operating inside, there will be more noticeable disruptions beginning in July when the building will be razed, which should take several months.
“We’re looking for minimal disruptions for the road. There will be times when they’ll have to be closed, but we’re hoping to do that at night,” Sherman said of some of the nearby roads around Courthouse Square, such as West Beau Street. “It’s not like you’re closing the Fort Pitt Tunnel. This is one little road in the city of Washington. It’s a temporary inconvenience for what will be a state of the art building that should’ve been built 10 years ago.”
The county commissioners during their March 21 meeting unanimously approved a $1.555 million bid from Adamo Demolition Co. of Detroit to bring down the building and parking garage that sits behind the Washington County Courthouse. Once the building is razed, which Sherman expects to be completed by the end of the year, the county will begin site preparations on the property to build a new public safety building. Those plans are nearing final design, Sherman said, which will allow the county to put out bids for construction later this year.
“It won’t be anywhere near the size of Courthouse Square because we acquired the Crossroads (Center) building,” Sherman said of the new public safety building that will house the 911 dispatch center and other emergency services. “We’re close to final rendering on the new public safety building.”
Meanwhile, the concrete from Courthouse Square will find a new home in the area since it is expected to be used as fill for when the former Washington Mall is demolished and prepped for development, Sherman said. The demolition company has agreed to save the concrete so it can be ground up and used at the mall site, which Sherman said has made for a good partnership to save on costs of the site development work at the commercial property in South Strabane Township where a Costco and other retail stores will eventually call home.
“They’ll need an enormous amount of fill,” Sherman said of the Washington Mall location. “It’s a way they’re partnering to work together with these two projects.”
Washington County officials said earlier this year they would use money from the county’s blight mitigation fund to demolish the old mall to make way for new development there. The bid for that work is expected to be awarded next week by the Redevelopment Authority of the County of Washington, which is overseeing that project.