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The room tower at the former Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles will be taken down bit by bit, not by a big blast.
Adam Rome, a lawyer for the receiver in charge of the demolition, said they can’t implode the building because of its closeness to neighboring businesses, including a car dealership.
Instead, cranes will lift Bobcat machinery to each floor of the 160-foot structure to destroy it, receiver Josh Nadolna of Great Lakes Property Services LLC said during a hearing Thursday before DuPage County Judge Bonnie Wheaton.
Great Lakes has received three bids for the demolition, but details of the bids, including prices, have not been submitted yet to the court.
Wheaton did rule that Great Lakes could immediately hire a company to remove all the window panes in the tower building at a cost of $18,400. Nadolna said there are more than 200 broken windows. He said that when he visited the site in late September, Nadolna saw glass moving with the wind.
Nadolna said the unstable glass could fall and kill someone, including construction workers, public safety workers or trespassers.
According to Nadolna, he saw someone living in a tent on the site during that visit.
Great Lakes has almost finished putting up a new security fence around the perimeter of the site, he said. The previous fencing only enclosed the buildings.
But even the new fence may not keep people out, he said.
Nadolna said his insurance carrier is requiring a security guard or other worker to remain on-site around the clock.
The windows would be removed anyway, according to Nadolna, because that’s where the cranes would put the demolition equipment in the building.
Rick Griffin, the attorney for the resort’s owners, St. Charles Resort LLC, disputed the cost of the window removal, saying the owners had received an estimate of about $3,000 for the work earlier this year. The city of St. Charles had ordered the owners to secure the windows. Vandals have broken the windows, including throwing furniture out of them.
The resort opened in 1963. It expanded over the years, including building the 16-story tower in the 1980s. The resort closed in March 2020.
In May 2022, four teenage boys broke in, and two of them set a fire in the tower. It spread to several buildings, causing extensive damage. Some of those smaller buildings have already been demolished, but their debris remains.
The city is asking Wheaton to order the demolition of the resort. The owners agree with razing it. The owners will pay for it, likely from the proceeds of a sale of the property.
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