Front of Barber Building starts to come down

BEATRICE - Piece by piece, the downtown Beatrice Barber Building is headed toward its demise.

A Skyline Construction Company crew has been using a lift and a concrete saw as they start to tear away at the Barber building’s Court Street facing in the middle of the four hundred block. Project Manager Mike Alexander says it will be a few more days before the front is down.  "It has a wire behind that...it's like a concrete....and it's a little bit trickier to bring down. But, it's gonna come down very soon...we should have that whole front down by next week."

The project was expected to take about 30 to 45 days, but Alexander says it will likely go just beyond that. A view from the rear of the building shows only exterior walls, plus a large basement which Alexander says held a lot of stuff.  "Furniture, car parts, fenders on cars, motorycycles....you name it, it was in there."

The eastbound lane of Court Street has been blocked off in the demolition zone…moving traffic to the middle lane and westbound lane.
"We had some engineering problems with the plates that hold the building together, but we overcame that. It's going pretty good....no injuries......safety first."

The demolition crew previously took out a rear portion of the adjacent former German National Bank. The Barber building was condemned by the city about two years ago. Once the building is down, the rubble will be hauled to a construction and demolition landfill southwest of Beatrice. The Barber Building site will be filled with dirt and leveled off.