And to accommodate the public, MSU has agreed with CDI to move the implosion up to 7 a.m. "What we do is graphically beautiful," Loizeaux said. "Let’s let everyone enjoy this event. I doesn’t happen here too often."

The implosion was originally scheduled earlier in the morning.

The implosion of Neumaier Hall is tentatively set for either Sunday, Aug. 1 or Sunday, Aug. 8.

CDI personnel will also establish public locations for the safest and best viewing of the big bang, which is expected to bring the 15-story residence hall to its knees in 7.5 seconds.

City of Moorhead personnel will also be available to answer questions at that neighborhood meeting.

The Center of Business building is located at 11th Street and 8th Avenue South.

MSU opts for the big bang theory…
MASTER BLASTERS TO IMPLODE
NEUMAIER HALL 7 a.m. AUGUST 8
Moorhead, MN……Neumaier Hall is going out with a blast--an implosion fueled by 82 pounds of explosives.

Master blasters Mark and Doug Loizeaux (pronounced LowAhZo) from the celebrated family owned building buster firm, Controlled Demolition, Inc, of Phoenix, Maryland, plan to implode the 15-story Moorhead State University residence hall about 7 o’clock in the morning  Sunday, Aug. 8. The date and time, however, are subject to change.

The deal must first be approved by the board of trustees of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. The board will meet July 20 and 21.

MnSCU, which owns the building, will pay Controlled Demolition about $800,000 to bring Neumaier Hall to its knees with a series of strategically placed and timed explosions. The sequential detonations are aimed at minimizing blast vibrations and noise in the surrounding neighborhoods while ensuring the building falls with a controlled, fluid motion.

The total cost of the project—including $275,000 for asbestos abatement, $180,000 for landfill disposal costs and estimates on debris removal and other engineering expenses—will run close to $2 million. MnSCU will pay the bill from reserves in its housing revenue fund, a contingency account derived from revenues collected at all state campus dormitories and residence halls.

The 163-foot-6-inch tall Neumaier Hall, which took two years and $2.3 million to build and first opened to students in the fall of 1970, will drop into a 14-million-pound (7,000 tons) pile of dust and debris within 7.5 seconds.

"All our demolitions occur on time, on budget, accident-free and without damage to the environment," says Doug Loizeaux, vice president of CDI, who will supervise the demolition of Neumaier Hall. "If we were a baseball team, we’d have a .999 percent batting average. Perfection is the norm for our business. Nobody in the surrounding neighborhood should worry about flying debris or glass breakage."

"Based on thousands of similar CDI projects, we anticipate vibration levels to be approximately .8 inches per second at Holmquist Hall," says company senior estimator Robert Kulinski. "The U.S. Bureau of Mines has established a 2-inch per second threshold above which damage may occur. So vibration measured at neighborhood houses will be negligible."

A dust cloud from the blast, a CDI engineer said, should not spread beyond MSU’s borders, lingering in the air for three to five minutes, depending on prevailing winds. That’s why CDI has preliminarily decided to press the fire button on the building in the wee hours of the morning that Sunday when the wind is expected to be calmer and the air damper.

An estimated 466 explosive charges connected by 200 feet of detonating wire will topple the building, which is expected to fall into itself and slightly southeast toward an empty parking lot. The sound of the explosion will reach about 127 decibels (glass breaks at 160 decibels). The sound pressure of a Boeing 747 at take-off is about 140 decibels, and a  NASA space shuttle at lift-off is around 200 decibels.

A team of CDI specialists will arrive on campus within a week or so. A crew of about six technicians will take three weeks to prepare Neumaier Hall. Another crew of four will take three days to load the explosives.

CDI president Mark Loizeaux’s 29-year-old daughter Stacy, a demolition technician and media coordinator for the company, will also help coordinate the demolition.

Horsley Speciaties, Inc., of Moorhead will begin removing asbestos from the building July 6.  Most of the asbestos is in sprayed-on ceiling tiles in the second through thirteenth floors, some in floor tiles, and some in the interiors of about 30 fire doors. It doesn’t involve much material—enough to fill maybe three 50-cubic-yard dumpsters. But the process is strictly regulated and requires stringent safeguards.

The blast zone will extend 375 feet on all sides of the building, or two-and-a-half times the size of Neumaier Hall. The entire blast zone, then, will remain on MSU’s property.

CDI will provide viewing areas for the public to watch the implosion. The area cordoned off for safety will be determined in coordination with Campus police and the Moorhead police and fire departments.

The 87,125-square-foot building, named after MSU’s seventh president, John Neumaier, was closed this winter when engineers discovered serious structural problems with the Moorhead landmark, one of the tallest high-rises in town. MSU Pres. Roland Barden, on receiving the report, evacuated all 305 students from the building, which houses 208 double and single rooms.

Neumaier, now 77, lives in Mount Dora, Fla., with his wife Sally Luther. He’s been invited back to watch the implosion.

Controlled Demolition, a family owned business founded by patriarch Jack Loizeaux, has safely demolished more than 7,000 structures during the past 52 years —high-rises, chimneys and towers, bridges, nuclear power plants, off-shore structures. The business is now run by his sons Mark and Doug.

"What goes up, must come down," says younger brother Doug, vice president of CDI. "Some people believe that grand old buildings should bow out gracefully rather than be hacked at for months. It’s more merciful, and it’s quicker than cranes and manual labor."

MSU physical plant director Todd Stugelmayer said the site where Neumaier Hall stands will be cleared of its 7,000 million tons of debris—about a 30-foot high pile--within two to three weeks and deposited in a local demolition pit. The debris is estimated to fill 800 semi-tractor loads. When it’s finished, the site of old Neumaier Hall will be covered with sod, sidewalks and trees.

According to MnSCU bids, taking the building down brick by brick would take at least two to three months and cost from $2.5 to $3 million. And the noise from wrecking balls, cranes and heavy machinery would be nearly unbearable for neighbors over that period, along with the unrelenting dust.

"We opted for the more efficient route," said David Crockett, MSU’s vice president for administrative affairs. "And a much less dangerous route. CDI experts told us in no uncertain terms the implosion is the only safe way to take out Neumaier Hall. The way the building is constructed (lift-slab structure), it could collapse anytime if we tried to take it down with wrecking balls and cranes. The height workers would have to deal with, and the tight quarters would make it extremely dangerous."

The implosion should have no effect of Holmquist Hall, which is connected to Neumaier Hall by enclosed walkways. Those walkways will be taken down before the implosion, and some Holmquist Hall windows will be protected by wooden barriers during the blast.

Once Neumaier Hall comes down, MSU will hire a consultant to determine if the campus may need more housing. On campus ousing needs of all students this year will be met.

The word’s most experienced and prestigious explosion company, Controlled Demolition has blown up buildings in every continent except Antarctica. and has more building demolitions under its belt that all of its competition combined. CDI also holds nearly every world record in the demolition business.

Last year they dropped the J.L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit, setting the record for the tallest building (439 feet) ever imploded and the largest structural steel building ever imploded at 2.2 million square feet. Last year they also leveled the tallest manmade structure ever flattened by explosives, the 1,202’ 6: Omega Radio Tower in Trelew, Argentina.

Other noted structures in their resume: The St. Louis Arena; a series of buildings in Mexico City following the devastating 1985 earthquake there; the Aladdin, Hacienda, Landmark and Sands Hotels in Las Vegas; the US Steel Plant in Youngstown, Ohio; and the notorious Pruitt Igoe Public Housing Project in St. Louis, one of 46 high-rise HUD structures the company has imploded since 1972.

In Minnesota, CDI has taken down eight buildings since 1966, including the Northwest Bank Building, the Radisson Hotel and the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis.

In 1963, Las Vegas put on a fireworks spectacle for the demolition of the Dunes Hotel North Tower as more than 300,000 people watched the building that Bugsy Siegel built felled in 4.5 seconds. Another Las Vegas implosion was seen by 600,000 and entertained millions around the world via satellite feed.

CDI has also served as consultants to the Pentagon and the State Department. Footage of their implosions and their special effects have appeared in movies ranging from "Lethal Weapon III" and "Demolition Man" to "Atlantic City" and "Enemy of the State."

Turning implosion into both an art and a science,  Loizeaux demolitions involve a calculated amount of explosives strategically placed and detonated in timed and delayed sequence (from nine seconds to milliseconds). Blasting caps are attached to each explosive, which are all connected by detonating cords that burn at 21,000 feet a second. The charges, once ignited, can produce more than 3 million pounds of pressure per square inch—cutting through steel girders like a hot knife through butter.

"The explosives are the catalyst that both weakens the structure and takes advantage of its stored energy (weight); the real damage is done by gravity," said CDI president Mark Loizeaux. "We use the building’s strength to destroy it, using the minimum explosives for the maximum efficiency."

Engineers have been monitoring Neumaier Hall’s twisting and sinking since soon after its construction in 1970. Twenty-five large, concrete caissons that extend 100 feet into the clay and silt beneath the building weren’t settling uniformly.

That uneven settling stressed the northwest corner of the building, pulling windows out of alignment and cracking walls, which prompted regular evaluations of Neumaier Hall’s safety through much of its life. It has moved 3 to 5 inches in the past 28 years.

Engineers initially thought the problem was caused by a shifting boulder that one of the concrete columns rested on. But when engineers hired by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system examined Neumaier Hall in January, they reinterpreted the data from the 1990s and deduced that the shifting was related to a significant drop in the ground water level.

According to those engineers, another sharp drop in ground water levels could cause serious damage to the concrete columns, further stessing the building and making it unstable.

But another engineering report released this summer said "it is not necessarily known what has caused this condition, or whether the building has settled, the corner has uplifted, or a combination of the two has happened."

Whatever, the engineering firm did recommend that implosive techniques would be the most timely and cost effective method of destroying the building.

"Our explosions have become a spectator sport and attract a good deal of media attention," Doug Loizeaux said. "It is graphically beautiful what we do, and a graceful way to say goodbye to grand old buildings. It’s almost like a good Irish wake."

On the 20th day of classes 1,998 students were registered for summer  courses. Enrolled credits, meanwhile, are up 18 percent, meaning more students are carrying heavier credit loads over summer—averaging two courses per students.

In 1992, MSU’s summer enrollment hit 2, 171.

The Guthrie Theatre company, on tour for the first time in a decade, will be in-residence at MSU March 23-27, performing and working with over 2,000 students and community members as part of the arts board’s Arts Across Minnesota Program. The state agency recently awarded 16 other grants, ranging from $7,992 to $50,000, to host communities selected for its Arts Across Minnesota program, aimed at bringing outstanding arts experiences to all corners of the state.

During their visit, The Guthrie Theatre will also present two special performances of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream for public school students studying the Shakespeare play. They will also give workshops at the Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre and at the Plains Arts Museum, plus bring their "Magic of The Guthrie" educational program to Moorhead schools.

Nathan Davis, MSU’s Performing Arts Series director, wrote the grant proposal as part of his effort to bring The Guthrie Theatre to the community.

She was selected after a national search and replaces Cynthia "Sam" Booth, MSU’s head athletic trainer since 1987, who earlier this year accepted a management position in physical therapy with MeritCare.

Scott, 30, a New York Mills native, graduated from MSU in 1992 and earned her master’s degree in physical therapy from West Virginia University. She served two years as assistant athletic trainer at Winona State University before returning to MSU in a similar position in 1995.

As head athletic trainer, Scott will supervise health care for all 350 to 400 MSU athletes. She’ll also supervise two assistant athletic trainers and coordinate MSU’s new athletic training degree program.