Early in his construction career, Ryan Olson was on a site near Minneapolis. An old farmhouse stood in the path of the crew’s project. He took the controls of a 40-ton excavator. A couple swings of the bucket later, it was game over for the farmhouse, and game on for Olson’s new career path.
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“It kind of piqued my curiosity and my interest in wrecking things,” he says. “I got my first opportunity to destroy something with a medium-sized piece of equipment, and I was hooked.”
Fast forward 26 years and Olson has the impressive title of senior director of demolition, operations and business development for Veit, a 96-year-old Minnesota company. In recent years Veit has expanded operations to Wisconsin and become the go-to as Milwaukee’s appetite for destruction has grown.
These are no humdrum buildings but places that formed core memories for legions of Milwaukeeans: the Bradley Center, former home of the Bucks; McCormick Hall, the beer-can shaped dormitory at Marquette; two towers that formed part of Northwestern Mutual’s Downtown campus; and many others.
Next on its hit list: the rotting carcass of Northridge Mall. Veit in June won a contract to raze the sprawling complex for $10.7 million. It comes as the city took ownership of the property after decades of legal wrangling following the mall’s closure in 2003. Since then, it’s sat empty and unused, a magnet for graffiti artists, drugged-out temporary residents and critters.
The Northridge project shows the company’s work isn’t always flashy. The main task will come with months and months of preparation, including clearing out asbestos and other nasty leftovers.
Anything that can be recycled will be, within reason. Finally, the demo work will begin. A crew of about 12 will bash what once was Waldenbooks, Radio Shack, Gimbels, JC Penney and Sears into piles of rubble. Dump trucks will cart away the remains.
It won’t take long, but there won’t be a big moment like the implosion of the Bradley Center in 2019.
“The wow factor here will probably be the speed that we move,” Olson says, “the speed at which the building comes down.”
Contrast that time-lapse destruction with the ka-boom of another recent project, the demolition of a Dairyland Power Co-Op plant beside the Mississippi River in Genoa, Wisconsin. A video on Veit’s Instagram page shows the gigantic structure intact, then employees in yellow company vests and hardhats flipping a switch.
The 350 pounds of explosives do their work. First the power plant’s main structure collapses to the ground, kicking up a massive dust cloud. Then the plant’s 500-foot smokestack topples in slow motion, backed by the adrenalized beats of “Tick Tick Boom” by Sage the Gemini. It, too, lands into a cloud of dust and loud applause. The fact that it’s on the ’Gram is no accident.
“Our social media presence has increased greatly in the last five years,” Olson says. “Before that, we liked to kind of keep things tight to our chest – you know, just do our job and not advertise it. But the world has changed. … So we have decided to be on the front of that and share what we’re doing.”
