Former home of Orlando Magic will fall in March implosion
Orlando’s old Amway Arena will go out with a bang after all. Developers of the site where the arena sits have revised their demolition plans and now say they’ll use explosives to implode the entire building sometime in March.
In August, the developers of the Creative Village and city officials announced that the 23-year-old former home of the Orlando Magic would be carefully dismantled, with much of its materials recycled or reused. But last week, they hired a demolition contractor who recommended implosion. “They felt it was the safest and most appealing way to bring the building down,” said Shawn Flanagan of ZMG Construction, a Longwood company working for Creative Village Development LLC.
Initially, contractors planned to use charges to drop the roof “like a bad soufflé,” Flanagan said, then use heavy equipment to tear down the walls piece by piece over several months. Officials said imploding the arena was too risky because explosives could damage a 9-foot stormwater drainage pipe that runs beneath the building.
But Flanagan said engineers have a plan to protect the pipe, which serves a much larger area. A platform or bridge will be built on the floor above the area where the pipe runs to absorb the impact from debris.
“That’s always been a concern and something that’s been taken into consideration. We’ve got a plan that we’ve worked out with engineers with the demolition contractor and with the city.”
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