Ambassador Hotel: Slowly but surely
Hollywood would call it The Long Goodbye. Some in the Wilshire district would simply call it long-winded.
Demolition of the landmark Ambassador Hotel to make way for a 4,200-seat campus is dragging on and on, they say, even though school officials have argued since the early 1990s that they desperately need its space for classrooms — and need it quickly.
The tear-down is in its fifth month — and to many Wilshire Boulevard passersby and neighbors, there appears to be no end in sight. In fact, there's not even not a wrecking ball in sight.
Los AngelesUnifiedSchool District planners say the demolition only appears to be going slowly because workers were forced to remove asbestos and lead from the 85-year-old hotel before knocking down its concrete walls.
Now authorities have to deal with the unexpected discovery of methane gas beneath the 24-acre hotel grounds.
Soil tests last month revealed the problem. Experts said school builders will probably be required to install an "impermeable membrane" beneath the new campus, along with a network of pipes to vent the gas.
Authorities said Thursday that could add millions to the campus' $270-million cost and could affect the planned 2008 opening of its elementary school. A middle school and a high school are also planned for the site; they are scheduled to open in 2009.
So maybe it's a good thing that demolition workers didn't give the Ambassador the kind of spectacular send-off some say the longtime celebrity hangout deserved: a dynamite-propelled implosion.
Many construction details are still being worked out even as the six-story hotel is whittled down.
And what about replicating the hotel's distinctive Wilshire-facing facade, as was discussed when the school district was fighting the Los Angeles Conservancy over the demolition? That also remains undecided.
Crews from Covina-based Cleveland Wrecking Co. began tearing down the Ambassador in mid-September. They should be finished in mid-March, said Jeff Droubay, Cleveland's vice president and project manager.
As spectacular a finale as dynamite might have been, Droubay said the Ambassador could not be blown up.
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