Tuesday, October 29, 2013
CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) –
Demolition of the old Lichtenstein building in downtown Corpus Christi continued at full steam Tuesday, clearing the way for a new retail and apartment complex.
Crews began tearing down the former department store on Monday. It will be replaced by a state of the art retail and apartment complex to be built by Realtex Construction.
Camacho Demolition Project Manager Vernon Carr said that implosion was considered, but ultimately, that option proved to be too expensive.
“We had the idea to implode, and I presented it to the general contractor. Just financially, it was out of our budget a little bit,” Carr said. “There’s a lot of prep work that goes involved with that. There’s a lot of permits. There’s a lot of street closures. There’s implosion experts we’d have to hire as well.”
Demolition is expected to take 60-75 days. The entire project from start to finish is expected to take 16 months before the Cosmopolitan at Corpus Christi, as the new complex will be named, is complete.