A contract to demolish the remains of the partially collapsed Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans still has not been signed, which may push the timeline for the planned implosion from March into April, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Thursday.

City officials had said several weeks ago that the wreckage of the 18-story hotel on Canal Street, which collapsed more than four months ago, killing three workers, would be demolished by mid-March.

But an agreement between the developers, a team led by Mohan Kailas, and the demolition firm D.H. Griffin has not yet been signed, Cantrell said during a media briefing Thursday.

“The contract has yet to be signed, although we expect it ... we’re closer than we’ve ever been,” she said.

The mayor said much of the delay has involved getting the state to sign off on some form of immunity for the demolition firm, to protect it against suits that might be filed in the aftermath of the explosion.

“We’ve worked through those kinks. We expect pen to hit paper really soon,” she said.

It is not clear what kind of immunity is being sought or offered or who might be on the hook if there are claims filed due to the implosion.

The Hard Rock was under construction when its upper floors collapsed Oct. 12. Officials moved quickly to demolish two cranes that were left dangling precariously from the site, but the rest of the building remains as it was shortly after the collapse.

Officials have gone back and forth on plans for bringing the building down. Initially, they planned an implosion, but then the developers proposed a plan to first shore up the unstable structure and then pick it apart with cranes.

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That approach, which could have taken until the end of the year to clear the site, was criticized by the city and eventually shelved when a contractor who would have been in charge of the stabilization backed out and the developers' insurer nixed the proposal in favor of an implosion.

The cause of the collapse is still under investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is expected to release a report in April.

Once the new demolition agreement is in hand, Cantrell pledged to hold a briefing to explain the plan for the implosion.

The details of that proposal have not yet been made public, though officials have said the bodies of two workers still in the wreckage will not be removed before the structure is demolished.

The locations of those remains, which crews have been unable to retrieve, will be marked prior to the demolition to make it easier to recover the bodies later, officials have said.

Cantrell has said the implosion will require taking down three smaller buildings on Canal and Iberville streets next to the Hard Rock site. They are owned by the same developers and would likely be badly damaged by the implosion, officials have said.

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