by Paul Bass | Aug 17, 2015 1:18 am

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Posted to: Downtown

While New Haven slept, a piece of its history came down, brick by brick, at the corner of Orange and Chapel.

There, while officials and passersby looked on, an operator named named Greg Bodytko, then another named Craig Capozziello, took turns behind the wheel of a 300-ton Komatsu excavator, manipulating a 30-foot arm with a bucket at the end to smash a collapsing abandoned building.

Bricks had started falling from the building at 810 Chapel around noon. Police roped it off. But word failed to reach the fire department.

Then, around 5 p.m., an off-duty firefighter named Lt. Louis Oliwa drove by. He noticed bricks falling in the street. He called Assistant Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli (pictured later watching the tear down with city emergency services chief Rick Fontana at left, Fire Marshal Bobby Doyle at right).

“It looks like it might collapse,” Marcarelli recalled Oliwa telling him.

Soon firefighters were at the scene, along with city Building Official Jim Turcio. They spent hours trying to decide whether the building should come down in full, or in part.

Around 9:30 they looked around inside. Fifteen minutes later, a three-foot cornice from the the top floor facade of the three-story building crashed to the ground.

The building would have to come down.

“Public safety,” Turcio said, “is number one.”

Miraculously, no one got hurt then—or all day.

“We’re just lucky,” Turcio said, “that it happened on a Sunday.” And that the building didn’t come crashing down all at once—which, he said, it well could have.

“From up top you could see the roof collapsed, pushing the front wall and the side wall out,” Turcio said.

At 1:16 a.m. only the back wall was still standing. Officials expected the entire structure to be down within an hour or two.

Earlier Sunday evening, Chris Vigilante, who owns the building along with developer Paul Denz, called in a crew from Abcon Environmental to work through the night taking the building apart, piece by piece.

After a gas company crew located a main below Chapel Street, officials thought maybe just the top floors would come down overnight, so that the gas company could dig up the street Monday morning. But as the night wore on, the decision was made that the whole building would probably have to come down.

A vigil ensued, with cell phones recording the methodical step-by-step dismantling of the building.

At 10:50 p.m., the Abcom crew placed tires along Chapel Street so Bodytko could drive the excavator around the corner ...

... to Orange without ripping up the street.

From the Orange side, Bodytko began ripping the skin off the side of the building, then knocked bricks piece by piece. Occasionally a tumble of bricks or a wall showered down onto the street.

His supervisor, Abcon operations chief Mark Sergi, said this was a delicate operation: Because the building is well over 100 years old, and close to so many other buildings, the crew needed to take care not to have the whole building collapse at once.

At midnight, Capozziello (right) of Connecticut Dismantling took over from Bodytko (left) behind the wheel of the Komatsu excavator.

The demolition was complete by around 2 a.m. By morning rush hour, the lot was cleaned up, debris removed from the street. Chapel Street was open to traffic; people were waiting for buses at the next-door bus stop. Only the block of Orange south of Chapel was closed off.

Turcio remained at the scene, preparing to draw up necessary demolition documents and to update the mayor. He’d been up all night.

Denz-a-Vu

The overnight scene was deja vu of sorts for Paul Denz. In December of 2007, on the same block, one of his buildings was destroyed in a fire. (Read about that here.)

The city’s ensuing decision to tear down that building caused a legal fight with Denz. Sunday night, by contrast, Denz concurred with the decision to bring the building to the ground.

“The building needed to come down,” Denz said as he watched it crumble. “We had planned on taking it down anyway.”

Denz has been in negotiations with the city to buy the vacant lot next to the building in order to create a new large building on both lots, with around 45 apartments above 10,000 square feet of first-floor retail.

Denz and city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said Sunday night Denz already has a memorandum of understanding with the city for his purchase of the lot (which includes a bus stop) next to the collapsing building.

Nemerson estimated that the first two floors of the building had been constructed in the mid-1800s.

An earlier version of this story follows:

Downtown Building Collapsing

The upper facade of a downtown building fell to the ground around 10 p.m. Sunday night, as the city’s building official condemned it and ordered it torn down.

Building Official Jim Turcio made the determination after he watch the facade fall from 808-810 Chapel St., at the corner of Orange St.

The building is owned by developer Paul Denz.

Turcio was on scene with Denz, Denz’s partner Chris Vigilante, and fire officials when the facade. Bricks had been falling from the building since noon, at which point police roped off the property.

Until the facade fell, Turcio hadn’t yet decided whether to condemn the building or try to save it. Then, he said, he saw smoke coming from some bricks, and the facade fell, making the decision clear.

“We’re going to try to make it safe tonight” and have the rest of the building torn down Monday, he said, as he waited for the gas company to arrive to make sure gas lines were shut off.

The fire department learned of the situation around 5 p.m., according to Assistant Chief Matt Marcarelli. The building appeared in danger of “imminent collapse,” he said.

Turcio said he then arrived to discover that “bricks were in the street, on sidewalk. From up top you could see the roof collapsed, pushing the front wall and the side wall out.”

“The roof must have collapsed today, pushing everything else out,” he said.

At 9:50 p.m. Turcio gave “50-50” odds to whether he’d decide later in the evening to call for the building’s demolition.

“If we can push the wall in, we could probably save part of the building. We’ll need an engineer’s report if we’re able to do that. The weight of the roof pushing on the outside wall might make it all come down,” Turcio said. Then the upper facade fell, eliminating the odds.

Denz had already been planning to tear down the building. He has been in negotiations with the city to buy the vacant lot next to the building in order to create a new large building on both lots, with around 45 apartments above 10,000 square feet of first-floor retail.

Denz said Sunday night he already has a memorandum signed with the city for his purchase of the lot (which includes a bus stop) next to the collapsing building.

“This was going to happen anyway,” he said of 808-810 Chapel. “If the building has to come down, it’s not going to change the timeline.”