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John Daley ReportingThe Inn at Temple Square may be coming down, but parts of it will live on through recycling.
Grant Thomas, Director of Construction Services, PRI: "We're trying to recycle absolutely as much of the demolition debris as we can."
This venerable landmark opened in 1931 as the Temple Square Hotel. It was refurbished in 1988 and renamed the Inn at Temple Square. It'll be replaced by a 25-story residential tower.
The process to give the Inn a second life started when all the furnishings were removed and sold at a packed auction earlier this month.
Now, the building is being stripped bare in a much less dusty process than implosion.
Anything salvageable, about 85% of the debris, will be saved. All the steel will be recycled, and the concrete will be crushed and used as base or fill material.
Grant Thomas: "This is becoming more and more standard in the industry and I think in the next few years this will become the way that it's done."
The amount recycled will be staggering--18-thousand tons from the Inn alone and 100-thousand tons for that block. The entire City Creek Center project will recycle 200-thousand tons of materials. All of it will be salvaged instead of landing in the landfill.
The additional cost to recycle and reuse the Inn will be about 150-thousand dollars, most of that money going to labor.
Grant Thomas: "It's about a 15% premium to do it this way. So it costs a little bit more. But it's the right thing to do for the environment and for our community."
The plan is to rebuild on this site with sustainability in mind, and to possibly seek so-called LEED certification--the gold standard for environmentally-friendly construction.
