The Green Tortoise Hostel on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle is being destroyed this week to make room for a 38-story condominium tower
Demolition began Wednesday and will continue through Friday. Construction will then begin on Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue, which will be a 440-foot-tall, 141-unit condo project.

Developers say the building will be the city's tallest residential tower. They added that the condo project, the first built under new city zoning rules that allow taller and skinnier buildings, will open in the fall of 2008.

Nuprecon is performing the work