Local company to demolish Aud
A Buffalo demolition firm with an extensive wrecking resume has submitted the low bid to tear down Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium.
Ontario Specialty Contracting bid $1.31 million, the lowest of 11 bids opened Monday by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp.
The contractor, located at 333 Ganson St., is no stranger to large and complicated demolitions. In May 2007, the company imploded a 14-story medical building at 50 High St., across Ellicott Street from Buffalo General Hospital.
A few years earlier, it took down the seven-story “Old Main Hospital” at the nearby Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
In 1999, it dismantled, piece by piece, the 2.5-million-square-foot Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant on Genesee Street in Cheektowaga to made way for expansion of Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“We’re encouraged by the bids we received today,” said Matthew Davison, spokesman for the harbor agency, which is overseeing the Aud demolition as part of its $400 million Canal Side waterfront redevelopment effort.
Davison described the bid from Ontario Specialty, one of six Western New York companies to seek the work, as at the low end of the predicted range. Preliminary estimates ran as high as $4 million.
The high value of scrap metal that can be salvaged from the arena is said to be a key driver in the lower-than-expected demolition bid. Nearly $4 million already has been spent to remove asbestos and other hazardous materials from the hulking arena complex.
The highest bid submitted Monday was $3.5 million.
The current timetable calls for the harbor development board to select a demolition contractor at its meeting next Tuesday . Work would start by month’s end and be completed next spring.
Because of its proximity to the Skyway, the Niagara Thruway and various underground utilities, the building cannot be imploded and will be torn down manually.
The Aud site is the future home of a 125,000-square-foot Bass Pro Outdoor World store, a museum and a public plaza with canal-themed water features.
No new construction on the five-acre Aud parcel can begin until the completion of a state Environmental Quality Review, which could take nine to 12 months.
The City of Buffalo will auction off a few thousand “blue” seats from the arena in November, and key facade elements will be salvaged during demolition and reused in a monument to the building’s history.
