The Admiral Benbow Hotel's sixth-floor wall facing Jefferson Street is pulled down by a pair of small tractors with a palpable thud that vibrates the thick concrete floor and kicks up a large cloud of dust.

Two additional tractors outfitted with claw- and hammer-like implements crush and pound the interior walls to rubble.

"They're taking one floor down at a time," said Binh Dinh, director of maintenance and facilities for the Greater Dayton Ohio Regional Transit Authority. "Piece by piece and wall by wall."

Demolition on the former 13-story hotel is 50 percent complete and ahead of schedule, said Dinh, the project manager. Vacant since 1986, the building is being torn down to make way for the RTA's new public transit pavilion, which will replace bus stops on Main Street within the central business district.

"Hopefully, it will become a more positive element," Dinh said. "We need that downtown."

At the corner of Main Street and Monument Avenue, a wrecking crane sits ready to demolish a former public parking garage and the Avis Rent-a-Car building to make way for the CareSource Management Group's 10-story office tower.

Demolition is scheduled to start after March 6, when Avis closes on its new First Street location, said Shelley Dickstein, special projects administrator for the city of Dayton.

"Immediately, removing that eyesore would only improve the landscape," Dickstein said. "As far as our perspective, it certainly makes way for what we think is a much more exciting opportunity, which is the 324,000-square-foot office building for the CareSource project."

The Benbow Hotel's 1960s post-tension flooring construction, in which tension cables are embedded in the six-inch concrete floors, means that the building could not be imploded.

Instead, it is being demolished from the top down by the Brandenburg Industrial Service Co. of Chicago, using four small tractors with proprietary "whiphammer" and "shearer" attachments designed and manufactured by Brandenburg.

"Seriously, it's like it's not even happening," said Kathy Cooley, a bartender at the adjacent Cold Beer and Cheeseburgers restaurant. "It's quiet. It's clean. There's no dust. There's no falling debris. They're doing a really wonderful job."

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