PBSCV1599
Gen. James Patton Anderson Camp 1599
Celebrating 34 Years 1992 - 2026
HOLIDAY INN, DOWNTOWN WEST PALM BEACH
HAPPY NEW YEAR! - 1993
Dec, 31, 1993
PLANS PROCEED FOR INN CROWD’S BLAST
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PUBLISHED: December 31, 1993 at 5:00 AM EST | UPDATED: September 25, 2021 at 7:23 AM EDT
The countdown to a New Year’s destruction is on, but last-minute concerns had West Palm Beach city officials scrambling on Thursday to find extra supplies so an abandoned hotel could fall to the ground safely.
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The 33-year-old former Holiday Inn is set to be imploded as 1993 turns into 1994 tonight, during a street party along Flagler Drive.
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Demolition crews discovered extra steel rods supporting the four-story building’s reinforced concrete this week as they primed it for the seven seconds of demolition Friday night. That meant the explosives will have to be reconfigured, said Doug Loizeaux, vice president of Controlled Demolition Inc., a Maryland-based firm working with Cobra Demolition Company. It will take no more than the 150 pounds of dynamite to bring the building down, he said.
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“We’re going to reposition the dynamite and reposition the charges,” Loizeaux said. “It’s a function of where we’re going to put it. “ The demolition crews also needed to wrap 142 columns on three floors in metal mesh and felt and columns on the first floor in corrugated metal, so the building can come down without sending missiles over downtown, said Cliff Geyer, owner of Cobra Demolition, which has a $171,000 contract with the city to destroy the building.
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“It would throw those stones for miles,” he said.
The “Mayor’s Danger Zone,” directly east of the hotel at Datura Street and Flagler Drive, was moved east from the eastern lanes of Flagler Drive to the curb for safety. The zone, which provides the best view of the implosion, costs $25 a person for admission, but ticket sales were stopped Thursday.No other revisions for safety need to take place, said Eleanor Wollenweber, coordinator of special events. In fact, the move will save the city money because it won’t have to drill holes in the road for the fence, she said.
The only buildings that will get extra protection against the implosion are a sports shop and antique store directly across Datura Street from the former hotel, shut down in 1986. The two stores will put up their storm shutters, and the demolition company will reinforce the shutters with plywood and felt, Geyer said.
Bimini Bay Cafe also will pin down plastic windows. Its patrons will have to evacuate to a special fenced-in area at 11 p.m. The other buildings around the abandoned hotel should be safe, Geyer said. “It would feel like no more than a big truck going down the road,” he said. Sweepers will come through after the implosion to rid the area of any remaining dust. Most of the walls and partitions were knocked out of the 163-room hotel to reduce the risk of dust.
September 6, 1993 at 4:00 AM EDT | UPDATED: September 25, 2021 at 6:39 AM EDT
Ignore the broken windows and six stories of missing air conditioners and exterior walls. Look beyond the green-and-white signs advertising the Palm Beach Residence Hotel. Think back a couple of decades and you can see in that relic overlooking Flagler Drive in downtown West Palm Beach a thriving downtown landmark.
As the Holiday Inn Downtown, it was one of the places to see,and do business. “It used to be one of the places to meet,” recalled Palm Beach Gardens public relations practitioner Dick Gruenwald. “There was something going on there all the time.” Take 1976, for example. Its meeting rooms bustled with activity, including the first appearance in Palm Beach County of a then-unknown presidential candidate from Georgia, Jimmy Carter.
Today, though, its name and reputation are different. Derisively, people refer to it as the Beirut Holiday Inn because of the neglect it has experienced since the last effort to keep it open failed in 1986. rippled by the economic deterioration of the city’s downtown, the hotel’s status as a lodging for business people and tourists became less and less attractive.
And in the early 1980s, a last-ditch attempt to keep the building open as a retirement hotel also ended in failure. Three competing centers nearby were better suited to accommodate retirees. The ultimate indignity occurred in July when the city paid just $1,000 for the hotel and the land. Eventually, it will be redeveloped as a part of the city’s waterfront. In the meantime, officials want to see the building go out with a bang, literally.
In the past week, the county’s Film Liaison Office has started sending out mailers to producers and filmmakers across the country touting the hotel’s availability to be destroyed. “Palm Beach County is ready to explode!” is the theme of the mailers, said Patricia Haggerty of the film office. “We are telling them we have this hotel, and if anyone is interested, it is available to be blown up.”
Prospects of the old building coming down have downtown interests excited, said Bill Fountain, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority. “Just the perception of that large a vacant building that near the waterfront has been a negative factor,” he said. “Once it is removed, it will bring the waterfront closer to the existing commercial area.”
The Palm Beach Post
Sun, Jul 26, 1992
Page 40
By LARRY AYDLETTE Paim
Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH — Tired of a half-restored eyesore on the Flagler Drive waterfront, city officials said Tuesday they take steps to possibly demolish the former Holiday Inn at Datura Street. The building is a public nuisance because broken glass, plumbing fixtures and other materials strewn across the site could be hazardous during a hurricane, a report to city commissioners said.
City Attorney Carl Coffin said the building is a target for demolition because city codes allow demolition if a building is half torn down and renovation costs exceed 50 percent of the building's value. Coffin expects a report on the building's structure later this week. But he said the city would immediately take the building's owners before a city board to require debris to be removed from the site. Renovation on the former hotel stopped earlier this year after the owner of the property, Palm Beach Inns Inc., became entangled in a court suit with its bank lenders.
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Coffin said one of the company's owners, Lanny Horowitz, told him financing might be a soon to complete the project. But Vice Mayor Pat Pepper Schwab said the city was tired of broken promises. “The developers we're dealing with have little or no credibility,” she said. “We need to pursue this with vigor and as if we're going to condemn the property.”
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The city hopes to sell the rights to blow up the ‘Beirut Holiday Inn’ to a Hollywood filmmaker.
DESTROY THIS BUILDING - PLEASE!
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“West Palm Beach has a waterfront hotel with a gleaming downtown backdrop – and it wants Hollywood to blow it up”
By GARY KANE
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
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Chased by terrorists, Arnold Schwarzenegger or maybe Bruce Willis races across a moonlit rooftop. A streaking cruise missile appears over his shoulder in the distance. He catapults from the rooftop into the waters of the Intracoastal as the building erupts like a volcano. West Palm Beach Mayor Nancy Graham envisions just such a Hollywood ending for the eyesore that has come to be known as the “Beirut Holiday Inn.”West Palm Beach has a waterfront hotel with a gleaming downtown backdrop — and it wants Hollywood to blow it up. The city bought the long-vacant hotel for $1,000 last week at a public auction. The city wants it demolished. The mayor would like to see rolling cameras and dashing super-heroes when the walls crumble.
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“The mayor kind of took me by surprise with the idea,” said Dennis Grady, director of the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches. “But if it would offset the costs of demolition and site work, bring in the camera crews.” The idea is far from far-fetched. Orlando and St. Petersburg were explosive settings for the movie Lethal Weapon III two years ago.
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“More and more Florida locations are being used by Hollywood producers,” said Will Plymel of the state Commerce Department. “Cities are competing for movies and television shows. If you have something to blow up, you've got an edge.”
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The day after the city bought the hotel, Palm Beach County film liaison officer, Chuck Elderd, photographed the building for a movie-location scout. The pictures are being forwarded to a movie producer whom Elderd declined to identify. "We're talking about a major motion picture, " he said. "It would be one of the top 10 budgeted movies of the year. "If that effort proved to be a dud, the city should consider spreading the word about the availability of the building through the Hollywood trade publications", suggested John Evan Frook, a staff writer for Daily Variety in Los Angeles.
"I get about one call a month from someone with a building to blow up who wondered if anyone in Hollywood might want to film it," said Froot who writes a column on movies and TV locations. If a building is architecturally interesting or located in a unique setting, I would say the chances are good that a producer would use it."
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"West Palm Beach's old Holiday Inn seems ideally suited for filmmakers because it's a waterfront property with a downtown backdrop," he said.
Orlando used the Hollywood trade publications in April 1991 to advertise the availability of its old City Hall building for special effects. Four months later, representatives of Warner Brothers Studios flew into the city to look at the building. "I think we are lucky that the timing of our plans to demolish the building coincided with the filming of the movie," said Joe Mattiga, special assistant to the mayor.
In the early morning of October 23, 1991, doubles for actors Mel Gibson and Danny Glover sprinted out of the old City Hall building seconds before it lit up the sky in a fiery explosion. "The eight-story building was actually razed by an implosion engineered by a team of Maryland demolition experts," Mattiga said. The filmmakers added small explosive charges and debris to make it appear that a bomb destroyed the building.
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An implosion causes the building to collapse almost within itself. Hollywood put the fire in it Mittga said. The film’s producers paid Orlando $50,000 for the right to film and somewhat alter the demolition. The money is being used to encourage movie and TV producers to use the city as a location, Mittiga said.
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The city paid $65,000 for the demolition and about $165,000 for the removal of the estimated 13,000 tons of rubble. Lethal Weapons III producers also staged an explosion at the Soreno Hotel in downtown St. Petersburg. The 68 year old hotel was demolished by developers who had other plans for the property. Unlike the Orlando spectacle, which drew an estimated 15,000 thrilled onlookers the Soreno Hotel demolition drew many spectators who mourned the loss of the waterfront landmark.
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It’s doubtful that anyone would mourn the loss of the Holiday Inn building the 35 year old Hotel, dubbed the “Beirut Holiday Inn” because of its gutted interior has been vacant since 1986. Rooms along the east side of the building have no exterior walls. In some places debris hangs from ceilings. “I think we might have to dress it up a bit to blow it up or a movie,’ said City Commissioner Jeff Koons, “but I think it could be done. “Maybe it could be used in a terrorist attack on a hotel during Sunfest, yeah that’s the ticket.
Plm Beach Post
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Readers: Now the downtown West Palm Beach Waterfront sports a "Great Lawn," a thriving split Clematis Street and a busy waterfront. It didn't always look that way. A momentous demolition 25 years ago paved the way. Here's more from a 2014 column:
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In 1992, West Palm Beach voters approved an $18 million bond issue to revitalize downtown. It included $4 million to redo the waterfront and do a major face-lift of the city library, then on Flagler Drive.
On New Year's Eve, 1993, some 20,000 revelers came to the waterfront to see lots of fireworks and one big one.
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Workers were to perform a controlled collapse (often incorrectly described as an "implosion") of the decrepit Holiday Inn, near the waterfront on Datura Street. The six-story building had opened in 1960 as the Town House Motor Hotel and became a 162-room Holiday Inn about 1969. Empty since 1986, vandalized and a haven for the homeless, it was so grim some took to calling it the "Beirut Holiday Inn." It had become a metaphor for a decaying downtown. Then-Mayor Nancy Graham bought the inn for $1,000 at a public auction.
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Workers planted explosives in about 300 holes in the abandoned L-shaped building's 53 support columns, from the basement to the third floor. And on Dec. 31, 1993, at about a minute before midnight, pyrotechnics began exploding, finishing with a rising fireball. They were followed by flashes of red and white light inside the building and then it began to fall in a rolling collapse that began at one end. It landed on the ground exactly at midnight.
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The revitalization of the waterfront got going in earnest. As part of that revitalization, in 2003, the city voted to build a new library and city hall complex in the 400 block of Clematis Street. It would take six years, but the new complex opened for business in March 2009. The old city hall site, at Banyan Street and Olive Avenue, stood abandoned until March 2018, when developer Navarro Lowrey Inc. bought the site for Banyan Square, a $145 million project with a waterfront hotel, apartments and restaurants.
And what about that old library? The 1962 building critics decried as an eyesore that blocked the magnificent view of the Intracoastal Waterway? Well, it, too, fell to the wrecking ball in 2009. We'll plan to visit that event later this year.