JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It took 14 years to knock it down, now the city has set a 2-month timetable to clean it up.
Pece of Mind Environmental has 60 days to clear out the rubble from Berkman II.
After the implosion, clean-up is on the minds of many Berkman Plaza residents.
“Almost no dust at all," Dean Nicks, a Berkman Plaza resident, said. “We can’t wait to get the furniture back out here.”
Dean Nicks and other residents had to deal with blocked-off building entrances and closed parking spaces leading up to the implosion.
Those will be the first things they noticed returning to normal.
“Our first focus is to, is to basically get back to the proper limits of the project and everybody has to go back to work and life," said Steve Pece, president of Pece of Mind Environmental. "And then we'll start with processing the concrete pile."
Crews were on the ground Monday, sweeping and blowing away pieces of concrete around the implosion site.
The shipping containers will be removed this week. Then onto breaking down the big slabs of concrete.
“It looks daunting, it looks like, like a lot of big chunks of concrete, which it is, but we have specialized excavators that have what are called concrete pulverizers on hand, and these are special hydraulic basically crunchers is a good layman's term, that will actually crunch the concrete up into smaller pieces, and remove the rebar with the cabling that's in there," Pece said.
Once that concrete is prepped, it will be taken away to a recycling facility.
The company has 60 days to complete the clean-up, but Pece believes it will be finishing even sooner than that.
“It's smooth sailing, and a very easy process for us at this point," Pece said.
As far as safety goes, Pece says the hardest part was the implosion, and he expects no safety issues during clean up.