The developer who built it helps to blow it up
Hardly a masterpiece, unfinished Asbury Park oceanfront complex is
imploded at the hands of its creator
Sunday, April 30, 2006
BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff
What Henry Vaccaro built, in the end he destroyed.
The unfinished building long reviled as a gargantuan monument to
Asbury Park's failed attempt at redevelopment went down in a heap
early yesterday, and at the demolition controls was the man who
helped construct it 20 years ago.
On his feet again after declaring bankruptcy more than a decade ago,
Vaccaro, now owns the demolition company that has been slowly pulling
the structure apart. He let his grandson push the button to start the
detonation at 7:01 a.m.
"There was a little apprehension (yesterday) morning to press the
button," Vaccaro said after the implosion. "Because it's a lot of
memories. I was a partner with Carabetta when we built it."
Joseph Carabetta was a Connecticut developer with whom Vaccaro
partnered in the 1980s to try to transform Asbury Park's dilapidated
oceanfront into a residential resort. But when banks holding
Carabetta's funding failed and he lost his financing, the project
came to a screeching halt.
Vaccaro started the C-8 Building, which was supposed to be a 16-story
oceanfront condominium complex, in 1986, but three years later it
stopped at only a shell of 12 floors and has stood neglected, looming
over the Monmouth County oceanfront, ever since.
Vaccaro said he wished the C-8 Building, named for its location on
redevelopment plans, could have been salvaged. He said he tried twice
to bring in new investors but couldn't get the deals to work.
When that site, along with dozens of other properties, was released
from the bankruptcy case in 2001, a new master developer bought the
rights and sold it to a new developer.
"I hoped it didn't have to come down, but since it did, I'm glad I
was the one bringing it down," he said.
Vaccaro, who still has his office in Asbury Park, has the demolition
contract. Two years ago, he chopped off part of the building that
jutted 60 feet into Ocean Avenue, and three months ago he removed the
adjacent skeleton of a parking deck.
Yesterday, he finished the job by contracting the implosion work to
Controlled Demolition Inc., the same Baltimore firm that took down
the bombed-out Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and
the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City.
Vaccaro had the honors of pushing the button, which he turned over to
his 13-year-old grandson, Alex Bahary.
"He told me, 'I know you built it. I didn't like the building, (so)
I'm blowing it up,'" Vaccaro said outside the demolition site
yesterday.
Metro Homes Inc. of Hoboken, which plans to put a 224-unit luxury
condominium complex on the site, paid about $200,000 for the
implosion, Dean Geibel, Metro's managing partner, said.
At 7 a.m., the designated detonation time, things started rolling.
In a separate building off-site, Vaccaro and demolition crews waited
for the "all-clear" call, the cue for detonating 80 pounds of plastic
explosives placed along the building's steel columns earlier in the
week.
On the balcony of the Paramount Theatre two blocks north of the
demolition site, Councilman John Loffredo, long a proponent of razing
the building, waited for his cue. After the countdown chanted by the
crowd with him, he pushed down on a ceremonial plunger.
Back at the building with the demolition crews, Vaccaro let his
grandson push the button that actually activated the charges on the
explosives. People in the room with Vaccaro noticed tears in his eyes
as the building crumbled in a cloud of brown dust.
By 7:01 a.m., nine successive blasts sounded, and then after a brief
pause, another nine more powerful explosions erupted. The building's
west side caved first, dragging down the east side. It was over in 14
seconds.
The crowd, estimated at 2,000, burst into cheers and whistles. When
dust cleared, some shouted, "It's still standing," because two
sections of the 12-story building were still some four stories high,
but crews were expected to take down what remained.
"Oh my God. It was very emotional for me -- the ultimate of what
we've worked for," Loffredo said "It's a wonderful thing. It signals
so much for us. A lot of people when we first got into office said
this wouldn't happen."
Of the old buildings, like Palace Amusements, that have been razed in
recent years to make way for luxury condominiums and townhouses, none
had been more universally ushered out of existence than the massive
structure between Third and Fourth avenues.
"No one will miss it," said Eileen Chapman, a city resident who said
she has grown to resent the impression it creates. "People would come
in and see that building and think nothing changed. Now we have an
opportunity to present Asbury Park as forward moving."
People chose their own way to bid farewell. Some offered cheers over
mimosas and Bloody Marys at local clubs. Others hosted post-
demolition parties on balconies. Still others sent rolls of toilet
paper streaming through the air from the windows of a nearby hotel.
John Porter, who watched the destruction from a park near his Webb
Street home, took photographs as excavators clawed at the twisted
remains of the building.
"It's just good to see it come down because it was such a huge
eyesore for years," he said. "Hopefully it's a sign of progress.
Finally."
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