You know which one the Powell Square Building is right? No? It’s the one downtown that looks like the remains of a building that was eaten and shit out from the other side of a zombie apocalypse. Well it’s finally going to be demolished. It shouldn’t be hard to take down though since at this point we’re pretty sure the walls are gone and it’s being held up by graffiti and stacks of homeless guy coats. In fact, all that graffiti facing 55 is load-bearing, so scrape that off and it should go pretty quick.

Last spring, the city condemned the building and gave notice to the owner.  December 28th, the city issued a demolition permit.  Oswald says Powell Square became a safety hazard.

The City of St. Louis says it’ll take a contractor 90 to 120 days to tear the structure down.  The project is complicated by Powell Square’s proximity to heavily traveled railroad tracks.

It will be kinda weird when it’s finally gone though. For one, it’s the last landmark to remind drivers “Woah! Holy crap look out! You’re almost accidentally driving in to Illinois! Exit ramp! Exit ramp! Where is the damn exit ramp?!”

The city intends to bill the $265,000 demolition cost to the building owner, listed as developer Stephen Murphy.

Good move. The owner of this lovely building is clearly the sort of chap that pays bills and likes to make sure his stuff is nice and doesn’t just look all busted up and smell like crack and homeless guy pee.

“If they don’t pay it then, we put it on their property taxes after the first year.  If they don’t pay it the following year and the following year, the third year, the city goes ahead and basically will sell the property,” said Oswald.

So lets just skip to that last step and make it a baseball field / parking lot. We’re great at making those!

via KMOV