Few days left for St. Martin's icon
A demolition crew is scheduled Saturday to topple the 120-foot-tall smokestack that's been visible to passing motorists and used by students on the Saint Martin's University campus in Olympia, WA as a meeting spot for decades.
On Monday, a heavy-equipment operator with Triple A Excavation of Federal Way began the demolition of the maintenance building next to the smokestack. City building inspectors determined the building was structurally unsound in June.
The building contained an old boiler, mechanical engineering labs, a campus bookstore and some abbey offices. The destruction of the boiler means the smokestack no longer is needed to vent the hot gases it generated.
The maintenance building and smokestack opened for use in 1949, 17 years before Lacey was incorporated as a city. The demolition work will cost $100,000.
"It's change," Bill McGregor, the university's director of facilities management. said. He watched as the building was being taken apart piece by piece. "Sad in some respects, but then, it's the start of a new era."
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