Demolition Is Underway On The Eastern Greenwich Civic Center

GREENWICH, CT — Demolition is underway on the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, according to an update from the Greenwich Department of Public Works.

DPW posted a photo this week of the building and said demolition is starting on the south side of the building. The playground and tennis court remain open, and residents are being asked to use the dedicated path and not go through the active construction site.

Officials gathered at the civic center on Aug. 12 to bid farewell to the building. The hope is to break ground on the Cohen Eastern Greenwich Civic Center this fall.

The current structure was built in 1950 as an employee recreation center for Electrolux. The town acquired the building and the 13.22-acre site in 1966.

Greenwich began to develop plans for a building rehabilitation in 2000, but in the years that followed, issues with the facility began to crop up which required immediate repairs.
After exploring existing conditions of the concrete structure, other problems were investigated such as space utilization, functionality and accessibility.

The lack of thermal insulation and air conditioning throughout the building, as well as a deteriorating subterranean plumbing system, have been problems for years. The town determined that a complete replacement made more sense.

The new civic center will be built on the same footprint as the current building, and was originally projected to cost around $21.5 million. The Representative Town Meeting then approved an additional $4.04 million for the project in March of this year.

The new building will be one-story and 35,418-square feet, and include a full-size multi-use gymnasium with roll-out spectator seating; 8,100 square feet of multi-use event space; three 1,000-square-foot activity rooms, two of which will share a partition that can be opened to create a larger room; and other amenities.