A Grand, Noisy Exit Planned for Hotel Near Disneyland

Early Sunday, the Grand Hotel will be reduced to rubble.

A demolition crew will implode the vacant 10-story hotel, which the Walt Disney Co. purchased two years ago, to create more parking for visitors to Disneyland nearby.

Disneyland is strapped for parking space, with Disney’s new California Adventure theme park under construction on one of Disneyland’s largest parking lots.

The 11-acre hotel site will be used for parking until California Adventure is completed in 2001. The conversion to a parking lot is expected to be completed sometime in July, said spokesman Phil Vandermost.

The building is scheduled to be leveled at 6:45 a.m. Sunday. A two-block area around the hotel will be roped off, and several streets in the area will be closed an hour before the blast.

The street closures at 5:45 a.m. include Harbor Boulevard at Freedman Way, Katella Avenue at Clementine Street, Manchester Avenue at the Pennysleeper Inn, and the Santa Ana Freeway offramp at Freedman Way.

At 6:40 a.m.--five minutes before the scheduled blast--the California Highway Patrol also will slow traffic down to 10 miles per hour on the Santa Ana Freeway.

More than 500 pounds of explosives will be planted in the structure by Controlled Demolition, a Maryland firm hired to level the hotel.

Once the detonator is pushed, the building should fall in three phases, crumbling to the ground in 18 seconds, said Jim Santoro, the company’s senior project manager.

Described as one of the world’s largest firms handling explosive demolitions, the company annually destroys several hundred structures around the world, such as bridges, smokestacks and buildings.

Along the Las Vegas strip, the firm exploded such notable casinos as the Sands, the Dunes, the Hacienda and the Landmark. The Aladdin will be demolished later this year, Santoro said.

In Los Angeles, the company also exploded a Southern California Edison industrial building, and a Public Works Department office structure used in the filming of “Demolition Man,” Santoro said.

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Going Down

The vacant Grand Hotel will be imploded at 6:45 Sunday morning. Spectators will be kept two blocks away as the building drops on itself.