Spreading Ashes : The Weight
In the days after the fire, there was an outpouring of support and grief. I had a day job, but many of the folks that worked at the GATH didn't. They didn't even have a night job any longer. So there was a lot of stress, a lot of people ready to help, and a general sense that the Georgia Theatre had to be rebuilt. Everyone knew what would happen if it was razed by the city. Developers could do as they pleased with that corner property and considering its location was worth millions. But not to the insurance people naturally. That is a serious prime piece of real estate. I have been told what other building owners have sold far smaller and less valuable buildings. But insuring anything for its complete replacement value is rarely done. It's far too expensive.
Obviously, it's just my opinion, but there had to be some serious plays made to kill the idea of rebuilding. Again, I am not and never was in a position to shed any truths or any light whatsoever on the business processes that went on after the fire. I was just the PM and a sound guy tapped to get the A/V right. But all kinds of crazy unfounded speculation ran rampant like a virus through the town. There were rumors, wholly baseless and unfounded I'm sure. Money brings out the worst in many people. The city was planning on building the giant parking garage that wraps around the GATH and there had to be plenty of planning and cooperation with two operations running adjacent to each other.
On a bright note, the folks from Horton's Drugs across the street allowed us to set up an office in an unused space on the second floor of the building. It would become my workspace for the next 19 months.
Before any progress could be made after the support structure was in place, a great deal of demolition had to take place. The plans called for removing everything but the four walls so that they could dig down several feet deeper than the original building's floor. This was a complicated process. Working around support beams that couldn't be moved due to the existing structure's stability, which you can see in the photo above, proved to be very robustly constructed. It all had to be broken down into tiny pieces for removal no matter how hard it was. They used to make materials out of higher quality stuff in the old days I reckon, and the construction guys were amazed at how tough the materials were to bust up. Several novel approaches had to be taken to break it all down and move it out of there. And there was only one exit they could use to remove it....
The straightforward loss of a local landmark is a complicated thing. Especially when it comes to replacing it. After all, it wasn't gone; it was just an empty shell at the moment. It took time to sort out the legal standing of the building. There were local experts naturally but the Georgia Theatre building isn't recognized as historic technically speaking. I think UGA has a lock on that in Athens.
This is pure hearsay on my part, I was not part of these meetings and negotiations, but from what I understood there were friendly and willing officials, but no real agreement as to how to move forward at first. Funding for rebuilding was impacted by the history and location of the building. Its relevance to Athens from its very inception in the early 1900s was unmistakable. Its relatively recent rebirth as a music venue had helped spawn the careers of numerous famous artists and argued even more strongly for rebuilding it. The place had its musical momentum, and the music scene of Athens in the oughts of the new century was booming. In the end, the building is considered relevant in specific historical ways and is registered as some form of a historical building, but it's not a monument. It sure was for many other music lovers and us!
The survival of the four primary walls and the marquee of the building were probably the only thing that saved the place from demolition. The original constructors of this building did not f*ck around. Everything was stout and oversized and interconnected with all the local old infrastructure. The brick walls were scorched inside, but still sturdy as hell relatively speaking. Reinforcing steel beams had to be added right away for safety's sake after the fire, even if the building was going to be demolished. Those walls are nearly 50' tall in some places and despite being thick and sturdy, they could collapse like a ten-ton stack of Legos on some poor old lady walking up Lumpkin street to get her cancer medications from Horton's. It would have been poor judgment at that point to tempt fate in any way whatsoever. But steel is expensive and money was scarce.
The modern method of brick wall construction is usually a single layer of brick "cladding" that is basically glued to a pre-made reinforced cinder block wall. The old GATH walls were nothing but bricks top to bottom. Stacked in brickish/bricky bricklayer fashion. I have no idea what the technique is called but it's impressive in its slapdash appearance.
The walls were 4-6 bricks wide, set in a crosshatch pattern at the base, and tapered down to as few as 4 wide at the top of the wall. The entire structure really got its strength from the giant wooden beams that spanned between the two longest walls and "tied" the structure together while supporting the massive roof at the same time. There were also steel beams that had been added at much later dates for office spaces and later the balcony that tied these walls together as well.
All of that woodwork and the ceiling burned away from the brick insets they were placed in and collapsed. Surprisingly, a great deal of the big beams was salvageable and was used extensively in the rebuild as well as for some other projects. These beams were huge. Again this is hearsay, but I was told the beams and much of the wood used was all cut from a single tree, a giant heart pine, shipped up from south Georgia. That sounds pretty cool but I have no idea if it's even remotely true.
The old load-in door was the only way to remove debris!
Someone needs to make an estimate of the number of musical acts that have carried their equipment in and out of that doorway!
The mini-me front loader just barely fit through that load-in door. At one point I tried to keep track of the volume of crap removed from the interior, but something funny happened on the way to the coliseum.
When you get into the demolition phase it can really start costing you some down and dirty money. You can't pay these bills in a year or roll them into a big loan. It's a cash business and trucks and bins are more expensive than you would think. So this kind of work is quick and dirty. They are supposed to keep track of the volume of this stuff by weight because you have to pay to get rid of it as well. You pay to dump it, next dude pays to haul it away for backfill. Genius business model.
They haul this construction debris away in big steel roll-on containers. They have some very specific limits regarding how much weight you can load into one of those things. If it's overweight you can get severely fined and all kinds of headaches. I can attest to the fact that concrete is in fact, heavier than it looks. Like, heavy AF. And apparently old, high-quality concrete is really heavy so a bunch of loads were overweight. Then they got confused for a day or two and my calculations were shot to shit and some fines got paid and I had to give up because math is complicated I guess.
I'll just say this and you will just have to take my word on it; There was at least one hundred million pounds of debris and one skeleton removed from under the GATH. HA!
There was a massive amount of debris to remove. Our little buddy above was resting in a chimney, sealed off long ago. Besides all the dirt, there was a considerable amount of brick and steel that had to be removed in stages to preserve the support structure.