“Demolition” is a word full of sound and fury, signifying … something, but what? Usually it’s an extreme, either a wanton act of destruction or a joyful exercise of reckless, wrecking abandon. A part of us blanches — we work so hard to build things and take care of them, after all — and a part of us just revels in the idea.

There’s a reason Americans go to demolition derbies and that “Hulk smash” is part of the pop-culture lexicon. No home improvement show skips the scene where the owner gets to take a sledge hammer to a wall. No motion picture bypasses the explosion. No social media is without its “watch this” moment when the building comes a-tumbling down.

But for the people who actually do it every day, demolition is something completely different, as much art as science, a job measured by precision, professionalism and a healthy dose of concern.

The folks who run Elgin-based American Demolition know the drill, and in the case of the former Sixth Street School building in Geneva, their priorities are to bring the building down safely, on schedule and with as little impact on the lives of the building’s residential neighbors as humanly possible.

They do that by working in shifts, wetting down the building repeatedly to avoid dust, limiting work hours to the center cut of the day, and emphasizing safety.

“We use a lot of water,” said Jeff Olson, the American Demolition project manager. “When it rains, we love it. As long as there’s no lightning, we work right through the rain.”

Demolition started today (Thursday, Sept. 17), and is expected to take about six weeks to complete. On Thursday, workers started on the Seventh Street side, which is the “back” of the former school and former home of the Regional Office of Education. The building superstructure will come down relatively quickly — probably within the first two weeks of the process, said Kane County Operations Staff Executive Don Biggs — and the balance of the time will involve below-ground work and site improvements, all the way up to seeding the grass.

The Geneva Library District is purchasing the property — basically an entire city block — at a price of $1.5 million, with the idea to hold onto the site as a possible future library campus.

We’ll keep you updated on the demolition work, in part because there will be a search for a possible time capsule buried on the property, removal of the historic cornerstone and other stories of interest along the way. But we’ll also take picture from time to time, not only to keep you posted on progress but because it’s just so dang fun to watch walls come a-tumbling down.

Read More

• PHOTO SLIDE SHOW: A Fond, Last Look at Sixth Street School in Geneva
• Sixth Street Building Demolition Costs Higher Than Expected
• Regional Office of Education’s Picks New Digs in Geneva
• Geneva Library Will Pay $1.5 Million for Former Sixth Street School Site