ShawneeDispatch.com

Photo by Kevin Anderson

The walls came tumbling down at the old Sacred Heart School in Bonner Springs Friday as crews with Midland Wrecking started the demolition work.

Photo by Kevin Anderson

Crews with Midland Wrecking removed sections of the roof on the old Sacred Heart School building in Bonner Springs Friday. The yellow pine decking and large beams will be removed and installed in the new city library that will be built on the same site.

Demolition of the Sacred Heart School began this week.

“Dirty and sweaty” is how Tim Kates, vice president of Midland Wrecking, described the work of tearing down the 50-year-old building. But it also can be fun, said Kates, who operated the powerful excavator — essentially a large backhoe — that tore down the walls and roof that once housed classrooms and that would knock the erstwhile gymnasium’s structure later that afternoon.

Bruce Coleman, foreman for Altmar Construction, the contractor that will build the new library on the site of the old school, estimated the amount of concrete torn down by Kates’ machine would come to about 1200 tons. The building’s main structure was concrete with a brick facing, with plenty of rebar embedded in the roof’s concrete.

Pushing down on the roof with the large shovel at the end of a powerful hydraulic arm, the excavator at times lifted itself up on the more stubborn parts of the roof and pushed over the walls like they were made of gingerbread.

While nearly all of the thousands of tons of debris generated by the demolition will end up in a landfill — including old desks, doors, windows and even some schoolbooks — parts of the building will live on in the new library, with the four large beams and the tongue-and-groove decking of Southern yellow pine from the gymnasium’s roof to be salvaged and incorporated in the ceiling of the new library.

“It’s so great we’ll be able to use such a neat feature,” said library director Kim Beets, who toured the site with city Project Manager Matt Beets — who happens to be her husband — on Friday morning.

Also, many of the bricks — at least 500 — will be available free to the public at a library-board giveaway from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 15 near the site on the corner of Insley and Allcutt street in Bonner Springs for anyone wanting a memento of the school.

Three of the trees on the site will also remain.

Construction of the new library is expected to begin in five to six weeks, weather permitting.

Kates’ crew tore the roof off using pry tools and a chainsaw to remove the decking, and Coleman estimated the entire building would be gone within 10 days.

Kates said the chainsaw would probably go through several $18 blades in removing the decking.

Coleman said the salvaging of materials from demolished buildings was becoming a more common phenomenon recently, which he attributed to "either the ‘green’ effect or historic preservation” interests.

“Although lumber is about the most green thing” for building, Coleman said, “because it’s a renewable resource.”

The most difficult thing about demolition, Coleman said, was to do it without disturbing the neighbors of site.

The building at 216 Allcut had been unused for years, after the school's church was burned in a June 30, 1996, fire. The church and the school relocated to Shawnee in 2004.

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