Cincy Preparing for Implosion

Downtown Cincinnati will be rocking Sunday morning, Dec. 29, but it won’t be a concert or sporting event providing the noise.

Rather, the long-time home of the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals will be brought down by a series of explosions that will cause the stadium to collapse inward onto the former playing field over a 37-second time span.

The former Riverfront Stadium, also known as Cinergy Field in recent years, served as home to Cincinnati’s football and baseball teams for 32 years, having opened in 1970.

But with a new football stadium already in place and a new baseball park nearly complete along the same stretch of the Ohio River, the stage has been set for the demolition industry’s greatest piece of theater: the structural implosion.

According to a report in the Cincinnati Enquirer, 1,400 pounds of explosives will be placed within 18 concrete structural supporting columns. The explosives will be detonated in a sequence of blasts over a 37-second span that will bring the stadium down one section at a time.

The stadium is being brought down at a slower pace than some other recent stadium and arena implosions because of the presence nearby of a 140-year-old bridge over the Ohio River that might not be able to withstand the shock of the stadium coming down all at once.

After the series of blasts, 135,000 tons of concrete and steel will be settled into a 45-foot-deep pit. The O’Rourke Wrecking Co., Cincinnati, estimates that it will take into August to clear out and recycle the debris.

The company has been conducting a sale of seats, plumbing fixtures and other items for which there was a souvenir or re-sale value.

Once cleared, the site will be used for parking and will house a Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame building, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.