Part of Dallas building stays up after Sunday morning implosion
DALLAS - A high-rise office building in Dallas was set to come down Sunday morning, but not all of the building fell during the implosion.
Several explosives were not enough to bring down the old Affiliated Computer Services building at Haskell and Central Expressway in East Dallas.
Demolition crews planned to bring down the 11-story building to make way for a new development.
A large crowd even gathered near the construction site to watch the implosion, but they were left disappointed.
People were surprised when the entire building didn’t collapse, but they were even more surprised when nearly seven hours later, demolition crews called it quits for the day with the core of the building still standing.
It was a building implosion that didn’t go exactly as planned.
The core of the old Affiliated Computer Services Building is still standing, and slightly leaning, after the rest of the building was imploded Sunday morning.
“The middle part, after it fell, it dropped like two stories and landed upwards like that and it was really cool,” said Pearl Wright.
It was a cool sight for kids like Wright, who showed up with her family for the 7:50 a.m. implosion, but not so cool for the demolition crew.
“When you’ve got 35-40 feet of vertical drop, was hoping it would telescope a little more, then trip over, but it didn’t,” said Steve Pettigrew, president of Pettigrew Inc.
The central core of the building is the concrete area where you’ll find elevators and stairwells.
“These cores can be really tough,” said Lloyd Nabors, with Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition.
The demolition crew said it’s not rare for the core to remain, but it’s definitely not what they planned, and not what people were expecting.
To try and tear it down, the crew brought in a high-reach excavator to crunch away at the core of the building.
People waited all morning and into the afternoon, but the core would not cave.
There were disappointing onlookers, like David and Julie Dempsey.
“Yes, I wanted to see it fall,” Julie said.
The crew says they underestimated the building’s sturdiness, and they’ll have to return with a wrecking ball another day.
The space will eventually be turned into The Central, 27-acres of mixed use development.
A number of nearby roads and part of the DART Rail were closed Sunday morning during the implosion. Those opened back up after the first part of the implosion, so all roads in the area are now back open.