Pomp, pageantry and procrastination mark beginning of military hospital demolition.
Before a wrecking ball was ceremoniously dropped atop a five-story military hospital at March Air Reserve Base to eventually make way for the 58 hectare (144-acre) March LifeCare medical campus, former state Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told a few hundred people gathered to watch that he wants to see President Barack Obama at the campus when the first building is complete. He described the project, being developed by Don Ecker’s March Healthcare Development group, as “something extraordinarily unique.”
Following 17 speeches – with the singing of the national anthem and a flyover formation of three small military planes providing breaks in between – the wrecking ball punched at the roof four times, raining bits of the ceiling down in one room on the fifth floor, before finally breaking through.
All the while, a live band played John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Crumblin’ Down” with the refrain, “And the walls, come tumblin’ down.”
Read more or watch a video of the interminable speeches here.
