The city is selling tickets to push the destruct button.
The city is selling tickets to push the destruct button.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- Want a chance to blow up the Oakland Avenue Viaduct?
The city is selling tickets, and one person will be selected to push the button that will bring down the 314-foot-long concrete structure.
Blow up might be the wrong term. The demolition company is planning an implosion, much like the one that recently leveled Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
Charity to benefit: Mayor Robert. T. Price saw the demolition as a chance to raise money for charity and has enlisted the help of the Mercer County Unit of the American Cancer Society.
That organization is securing a state small-games-of-chance license, and the city will help it sell tickets on a chance to push the button.
Price said the tickets will be ready for sale this weekend at $1 each. They will be available in stores, taverns and other locations in the city.
The proceeds will go to the Cancer Society for use in its local programs, Price said.
The bridge, which runs 60 feet above the Shenango Valley Freeway and Pine Hollow, was closed Monday as demolition work began, but the the implosion date hasn't been scheduled.
Price said the tickets will say that the demolition will be between April 30 and May 30. It will be on a weekend, probably a Saturday, he said.
What's planned: The demolition company will drill more than 470 holes in which explosives will be placed to bring the bridge down.
It will fall across the four-lane freeway, which will be closed and covered with a layer of sand and soil 8 feet thick topped by a 4-foot special cushion to protect it from damage.
The freeway will remain closed for two or three days and then be reopened for one lane of traffic in each direction for the duration of the project.The viaduct was an all-steel structure when it was first built, but that bridge was demolished and replaced with the current concrete structure in 1936. Carmen Paliotta Contracting of South Park, Pa., has been given the job of taking down the old bridge and erecting a new one.