It may be just another five or six weeks until the demolition of the New Haven Coliseum finally ends. It began in October of 2005 with Mayor John DeStefano taking the first bite out of the building. Now the mayor says the city is close to setting a date for the big boom.

"We've revised the contract with the demolition contractor and we hope to see it down in late January some time," Mayor DeStefano said.

All of the arena section came down months ago. The original plan was to implode all of the parking garage above it. What really set the schedule back was the discovery that crucial underground utility cables could be crushed by the weight of the imploding parking garage. That meant the sections of the garage above those cables had to be dismantled and hauled down before the implosion. The mayor's "contract negotiations" were mostly about who would pay that unexpected cost.

That job is done, however, and crews are piling up mounds of dirt to cushion the fall when the garage does come down. The only major step after that is to attach explosives to the 18 giant support columns and precisely time them to avoid bringing anything else down.

And that's the trick, to time the detonations of the charges on those support columns so that the structure actually collapses in on itself -- imploding instead of exploding, of course -- because if debris falls outside of the current footprint of the building, that's when you have some problems.
It's an important concern with buildings like the Knights of Columbus tower just a few dozen yards away. Local business owners say the sooner the towering eyesore comes down, the better.

Demolition of the New Haven Coliseum has resumed after being put on hold for four months.

The delay allowed United illuminating to analyze the impact an implosion would have on nearby power lines.

Demolition crews have received the green light and began removing some of the structure's concrete slabs Wednesday.

Crews say the coliseum will be ready for implosion in August.