Well, it’s certainly a good time to be a demolition contractor in Detroit, Michigan right now. After receiving $50 million dollars in order to fight blight within the city limits, the city has successfully demolished 10,171 buildings (as of July 24th), with thousands more to go.
The cool thing about all of these demolitions is that Detroit is extremely transparent with the information, even setting up an interactive map with all of the completed demolitions and all of the ongoing and planned demolitions. Just in 2016 so far, 2,605 demolition have been completed and another 599 are already under contract. The map has embedded and colored dots all over the city and clicking on each one brings up a menu of details about the demolition, including the contractor, contract amount, and date.
Since the demolitions have begun, contractors have been awarded of $90 million in contracts, with over 25% of that being awarded to minority owned businesses. The average cost for each demolition completed thus far is $12,510. Archpaper reports that another 7,000 demolitions are planned in 2017 alone and the city has a goal of 40,000 total demolitions by 2022. Not only have the demolitions helped increase property values in the area, but Mayor Mike Duggan also stated that they have reduced the number of building fires by 25%. Abandoned houses are typically magnets for arson and crime.
If you'd like to submit a bid for an upcoming demolition, you can find more information about that by clicking here.
If you’d like to check out the interactive demolition map, which is updated daily at 5pm, click here.
In November of last year, the 546 foot tall Mina Plaza in Abu Dhabi officially broke the world record for tallest demolition by explosion, supplanting Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan, which held the record for 22 years.