Deconstruction Underway: 95% Reuse/Recycle Target with Eugene City Hall
McKenzie Commercial working to remove wood slats from the exterior of the Eugene City Hall. Exposing CMU block walls and storefront windows to be recycled.
A methodical dismantling of the 50-year-old City Hall began last week, after the City Council endorsed the plan to raze City Hall and build a smaller one in its place by mid-2016. The city hopes to reuse or recycle 95 percent of the building.
Contractor, McKenzie Commercial started removing the 750 16-foot-long wooden beams from the City Hall's exterior. Some of the Western red cedar will be reused in the new City Hall, as doors or interior finishes, or for benches and other features in the outdoor plaza. Other parts of the building will be given to nonprofit organizations such as BRING Recycling, which plans to sell salvaged materials. These reuse/recycling components include:
- Concrete block walls that will ground on site and used to fill in the basement parking level
- Removal of cabinets and fixtures
- Removal of 3,000 2-foot-by-2-foot concrete pavers from the interior plaza (each paver weighs 100 pounds)
BRING will remove the cabinets, fixtures and pavers, and will sell the plain pavers for $3 apiece and decorative ones for $4 each.
Much of the building's public art will also be reused and refurbished to provide a connection to Eugene’s past and the former City Hall. This includes work by the late sculptor Jan Zach and late painter Andrew Vincent. Due to the building's inward design, much of the artwork was not easily seen but the public. It is the intent to place the artwork in prominent places and turn it into a collection that has more public presence. The new design provides this "more public" opportunity as the three- or four-story proposed building of about 25,000 to 30,000 square feet features a public plaza that will be built at street level.
For more information about the City Hall deconstruction and its reuse/recycle uses, please visit the article featured Friday's (10/3) Register Guard.