After years of delays and debate, demolition of Albany's Central Warehouse will start at 9 p.m. Monday.
It'll be a few more days before demolition work on Downtown Albany's 11-story, nearly century-old eyesore will be visible from I-787.
Work crews will be pulling overnight shifts over the next few days to remove the railroad bridge that connects the Central Warehouse to Amtrak's rail network, which is expected to cause road closures and detours.
Once that's done, construction crews will install scaffolding over the next two months and begin removing pieces of the building in December. Work is expected to continue through the winter.
Until now, the demolition has been held up by court challenges, permitting issues and a more-than-year-long asbestos abatement process.
"This has been a complicated project from day one, particularly because the building sits directly adjacent to active rail lines," Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said in a statement Monday. "It has required extensive planning and coordination to make sure the work is done safely and responsibly. Each milestone brings us closer to removing the Central Warehouse from Albany’s skyline once and for all, and this is a big one. The end is finally in sight.”
The Central Warehouse was originally built in 1927 as a 495,000-square-foot cold storage facility. It was abandoned in the 1990s and has fallen into decay over the decades, despite proposals to rehabilitate and repurpose the hulking structure.
There are no formal plans for the site after the building is demolished, but McCoy previously told reporters he's inspired by a proposal to redevelop the nearby old Erie Canal Lock One.
