Sands BethWorks officials won a gambling license in part because they pledged to preserve Bethlehem Steel's legacy alongside their $600 million casino complex in south Bethlehem.

But before the first brick is laid, hulking remnants of that legacy must come crashing down.

On April 26, demolition will begin on 10 Steel buildings to clear the way for 5,000 slot machines and a 10-story hotel and conference center -- 11 years and several failed plans after Bethlehem Steel first floated the idea of turning the old plant into a museum and entertainment complex.

Nearly two dozen other Steel buildings will eventually be preserved, but three months of demolition by Brandenburg Industrial Services of Bethlehem will turn the century-old buildings into 7,000 tons of scrap metal.

It will be the start of a project designed to have people pumping money into slot machines by the end of 2008, said Sands BethWorks President Robert DeSalvio.

If all goes as planned, a casino with just 3,000 slot machines will open first, a 300-room hotel and retail shops will open in early 2009, and an expanded casino and retail shops will open by the summer of 2009.

It's all part of a redevelopment city officials say will bring rebirth to the 124-acre site. But watching those 19th-century Steel buildings come down will be painful for people like historian Lance Metz of the National Canal Museum in Easton.

"[The buildings] will be a loss, but I'll settle for saving the artifacts in them," Metz said. "Please tell me they're saving the 1885 press and that 60-foot gun from the USS Mississippi."

The gun, he said, weighs 186,000 pounds.

No need to worry, DeSalvio said. Those two artifacts are in the six-building weldment complex being flattened, but before a single girder falls, all of the pieces, including a diesel locomotive and armor plates tested by the military, will be moved to a secure location.

And even the weldment complex is being reduced to scrap, Sands BethWorks will be preparing the massive ore bridge to become a dramatic entrance into the casino, and installing architectural lighting that will make certain the five blast furnaces remain a majestic backdrop.

The No. 5 high house, where 16-inch battleship guns were heat-treated, and the elevated ore-moving rail will also be saved in the first phase.

Everything that replaces the demolished buildings will have a distinctly industrial look, with gable roofs, glass, steel and brick facades and gold-colored lighting designed to re-create the glow that once emanated from the massive plant, home of the longtime No. 2 U.S. steelmaker.

But gone will be the locomotive repair shop, the electric furnace melting building, the steel foundry and the blast furnace bag house.

Metz was happy to hear that the 1885 press, which descends nearly 20 feet beneath the weldment complex floor, will stay right where it is.

Brandenburg, which Sands BethWorks chose Monday as the demolition contractor, will tear down the building around it.

By next year, that area will be a 1,000-space parking lot. Somewhere in the middle will be the 7,500-ton press, jutting from the ground as a monument to what once was.

The overall plan, which could cost as much as $900 million to build, includes a new PBS-39 WLVT studio, an ArtsQuest performing arts center and the National Museum of Industrial History, and hundreds of condominiums and apartments.

In all, the plan calls for reusing at least parts of 23 of the remaining 36 buildings on the site.

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