The Strinden Center building on the UND campus was dripping with water when the excavator finally raised its arm and moved in with its jawed bucket.
Crews from Berger Enterprises, a regional contractor brought to campus to demolish the building that once housed various functions of the UND Alumni Foundation and Association, had been disconnecting utility lines for much of the past two days. In the early afternoon Wednesday, workers began hosing the center down with water, a dust control method that continued as the excavator devoured the building, pulling it apart into rough piles of salvageable materials.
The Strinden Center was one of seven campus buildings planned for demolition before students return to campus in the fall. UND project manager Brian Larson had previously expected another building to fall Wednesday, the former Conflict Resolution Center at 314 Cambridge St., though that demolition was ultimately postponed. Larson still predicts that other building will come down by the end of this week.
For the past few years, university leaders have discussed the prospect of reducing the number of campus buildings, citing high deferred maintenance and operations costs.
A master plan released in early 2016 described the eventual phase-out of about a dozen of the nearly 245 buildings at UND and, last summer, UND interim President Ed Schafer identified 13 buildings to be pulled offline as soon as possible.
ADVERTISEMENT
UND announced in January its intent to demolish eight campus buildings. Besides the Strinden Center and 314 Cambridge, the university will also be razing 2912 University Ave.; the former Center for Community Engagement at 317 Cambridge; the former Era Bell Thompson Center; the former International Center; the former Women's Center; and Chandler Hall. Chandler, which was built in pieces and contains the oldest structure on the UND campus, is the last building scheduled for demolition and is expected to be taken down next summer.
The other buildings are expected to be torn down and put through site remediation by Aug. 11.
The fate of the remaining buildings marked for offline status has yet to be determined. That set includes Gustafson Hall; Montgomery Hall; Dakota Hall; Corwin/Larimore Hall; and Robertson/Sayre Hall.
Roberta Beauchamp, an employee of the Alumni Association for nearly 30 years, was part of a small group of association employees who gathered in the shade across University Avenue to watch the building come down. At one point, Beauchamp crossed the street and asked a Berger employee if she could possibly have a brick from the building for a keepsake.
She returned to her coworkers a few minutes later with an armful.
"It's very sad to see it go," she said later, watching the excavator tear at the building. "But yet, it so needed to be torn down because of the disarray it's in. ... It was time. And it's prime real estate for the campus, it's in a great corner there."
The Strinden Center was originally built in 1987-88 and was once the Methodist Wesley Center.
In late 1996, under the guidance of Earl Strinden-longtime North Dakota legislator, former CEO of the Alumni Association and the namesake of the center-UND purchased the 10,000-square-foot structure then known as the United Campus Ministry building. The building was the last on the UND campus to be owned by the Wesley entities after that group sold its buildings-notably Robertson/Sayre Hall and Corwin/Larimore Hall-to the public university in 1965. UND's purchase of the center came not long before the major flood that soaked Grand Forks in 1997 and hit dozens of university buildings along the English Coulee. Some functions of the alumni organization had already been moved into the Strinden Center, which stayed relatively dry throughout the natural disaster.
ADVERTISEMENT
The alumni association employees remained in the center until fall 2012, at which point they moved to the recently completed Gorecki Alumni Center built just down the road. After that, the building housed faculty from the UND School of Law temporarily displaced by the renovation of their home building but, for the most part, the Strinden Center had reached the end of its consistent use on campus.
The man who lent his name to the building was at his summer home in Pelican Rapids, Minn., while the center met its end. Strinden, who retired in 2000, said he hadn't really been thinking of the building today, though he had received some calls about the demolition from former coworkers.
Strinden says he never asked for the building to be named after him and, though he says its purchase was the right move at the time, he doesn't mind hearing of it being razed.
"It served a very valuable purpose," Strinden said. But at the same time, he said he had no real feelings about the demolition, noting that "times change" and the center had fulfilled its purpose for UND.
