The Fort Ord Reuse Authority’s Building Removal Program (“Program”) provides for the demolition, deconstruction, and/or relocation of approximately 1,200 former Fort Ord structures. Approximately 900 of the buildings are in the City of Marina University Village project area - the remainder located in the County of Monterey’s East Garrison Village and in the City of Seaside University Village areas.
The Program implements past work of the Pilot Deconstruction Project (PDP”), a cooperative effort of local businesses, labor and educational institutions. The PDP included a “Hierarchy of Building Reuse” to identify and safely salvage/ recycle the buildings or the material. The Hierarchy established a three step review to determine if structures can economically be salvaged by: 1) reuse in place, 2) relocated and reused, 3) deconstructed for reuse of components and 4) demolition with aggressive recycling.
In 2005, FORA and the Marina Community Partners entered into an agreement that stipulates the conditions for removing buildings and the payment for these services. Marina Community Partners agreed to respect the Hierarchy of Building Reuse in this agreement and require that their building removal contractor for Marina University Village also honor the Hierarchy. The University Village building removal began in October of 2005. To date, February 2006, approximately 100 buildings have been removed and one building in the University Village project has been saved for reuse in place. Several other large buildings have been identified for reuse in place and or relocation.
The Marina University Village building removal project is currently recycling 99.9 % of the total project debris, including asphalt and concrete. Materials with contaminants are not included in these figures and are hauled to the proper disposal facilities. Recycling of wood products in the barracks buildings is hampered by lead based paint historically applied by the US Army to the interior structural members of the buildings. Expecting to find non-contaminated wood materials (suitable for recycling) the contractor has dedicated on site areas for recycling “clean” buildings/materials. Materials that the contractor has been very successful in recycling are:
Ø Landscaping, trees and stumps,
Ø Metals of all kinds,
Ø Asphalt material from roads
Ø Concrete from foundations and slabs
The Program will be ongoing for the coming five years.