August 19, 2000|By Melody Holmes | Melody Holmes,SUN STAFF
Broadway Towers, a former public housing high-rise at Broadway and Fayette Street, is scheduled to be imploded at 10 a.m. today.
The 24-story building once housed hundreds of low-income families and most recently served as a senior citizen residence.
"The building is just standing on structural columns," said Doug Loizeaux of Controlled Demolition Inc., which is doing the implosion.
The frame and the bricks are all that remain of the structure. More than 200 pounds of nitroglycerin-based dynamite placed in 900 areas of the building are intended to send it toppling in on itself, Loizeux said. The process takes 12 seconds, he said.
He suggested the best place for spectators to view the implosion from a safe distance would be from the intersection of Caroline and Fayette streets.
Between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m., officials will close a 10-square-block area around the tower, bordered by Monument, Caroline, Baltimore and Wolfe streets.
The demolition is part of the city's effort to rid itself of high-rise public housing, said John M. Wesley, spokesman for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.
Since the city received federal Hope Six funds in the mid-1990s, it has destroyed 15 public high-rises, including six at nearby Lafayette Courts, five at Lexington Terrace and four at Murphy Homes, both in West Baltimore.
Residents were given aid relocating and "dispersed throughout the city," Wesley said. Some from Broadway Homes will return to live in about 90 town homes planned in the area. It's not clear where the new homes will go, as the city is considering a land swap with Johns Hopkins Hospital.
