The Lubbock Municipal Coliseum is seeing it’s last days, as construction workers are starting to tear down the building for good.
“Now we’re going to start doing the demolition,” said Billy Breedlove with the Facilities Planning & Construction Texas Tech University System, “Probably in the next day or so you’ll actually see some action taking place. We’ve got a lot of large equipment out there, if you’ve seen that. We’ll probably start in the next day or so starting on the auditorium side working our way into the coliseum.”
Since the process is just beginning, the timeline is murky.
“We’ll learn more as we get into it,” said Breedlove, “These buildings all react differently and so once the equipment starts going in we’ll be able to tighten up that timeline.”
People in Lubbock have had great times in the coliseum and there were some things saved.
“We had a few chairs that were mounted to the floor. We have taken some of those out so a few people will get those and they’re going to be repurposed in other areas,” said Breedlove.
But other things will have to go, like autographed wall.
“We tried and looked at many different avenues to try and save that wall. It’s just impossible. That’s a load-bearing wall. It’s a concrete and a block wall, also. It’s really just a life safety issue,” said Breedlove.
Even with the construction site very close to the baseball field, Breedlove said they don’t expect any problems.
“We’ll be very sensitive when we work in that area. We know there’s going to be some dust. There’s going to be some loud noises in there. We’re not going to interfere with our baseball team at all,” he said.
They hope this will wrap up by August and don’t expect it to interfere with summer classes either.
