Owners of condo close to 1515 S. Flagler building claims it was damaged by implosion.
Depending on who you ask, it was either the second or third tallest building ever imploded; it was described by city officials as “flawless” and by one industry expert as “perfect an implosion that you will ever see”. But with the dust now settled and the clean-up in full swing at the site of the former 1515 S. Flagler Drive building in West Palm Beach, the repercussions have begun.
Viking Arms at 1527 S. Flagler Drive, 43 metres (142 feet) from the implosion site, has required temporary patches to fill about 40 holes on its roof, property manager Seth Shulman said Monday.
“It’s definitely pieces nobody expected, chunks being thrown everywhere,” Shulman said. “After the roof was cleaned up, there was a lot more damage than we thought.”
Shulman said he was surprised to find holes ranging from pencil tip dots to six-inch punctures. “When we were going through all the details with the developers, nobody ever said anything about pieces of concrete flying the way they did,” Shulman said.
According to Shulman, three floors in the 30-story building were filled with explosives, and then the concrete where the explosives are placed are wrapped in chain-link mesh to capture any big pieces. “They said it would be enough to keep all the concrete in the contained area from blowing out,” Shulman said.
Doug Wise, the city’s construction services director, said that Viking Arms is the only condo to report as much damage as it did, although a neighboring house reported interior drywall cracks. Wise couldn’t verify whether the cracks were caused by the demolition, which was the third-tallest implosion ever staged in the United States.
“Viking Arms is not going to get abandoned in this deal,” Wise said. “The city is going to stand by them and make sure the insurance company makes it right, as fast as we can.”
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