NORTHAMPTON — The excavator’s claw dug into the forest-green roof. The breezeway in front of what was once the Clarion Hotel & Conference Center on Atwood Drive collapsed.
A man on the ground raised a hose onto his grease-stained shoulders and sprayed it to contain the dust coming off the wreckage. Wood splintered and metal scraped against metal as the humming machine moved the structure’s remnants from one pile to another.
Demolition that began on the hotel Tuesday continued Wednesday as part of a process that will see the building replaced with new businesses. The hotel, part of the Hampshire Hospitality Group, closed in November.
Eileen O’Leary Sullivan, a Hampshire Hospitality Group partner, said the demolition should take about three weeks, but plans for construction are not yet in place.
“Construction will begin when we secure a major tenant,” she said. “We have interest from several groups that are looking for small spaces, and we need enough that the building would pay for itself.”
J. Curtis Shumway, president of the Hampshire Hospitality Group, said the group could secure an anchor tenant within the next 30 or 60 days, but it could take longer.
In 2013, the Planning Board approved a plan to build a new hotel as well as an office building and restaurant on the site. The Hampshire Hospitality Group also owns and developed adjacent buildings at 8 and 22 Atwood Drive.
Those two buildings are each about 40,000 square feet and the new office building could be twice the size of those structures, Shumway said.
The group is also still looking at restaurants. Shumway said the original plan called for a small stand-alone restaurant, but there’s a possibility the restaurant could instead be part of the office building or a new hotel.
“There’s a little bit of flexibility we have there,” he said.
The Clarion opened in 1968 and was formerly called the Colonial Hilton and Pages Loft. The vestiges of the hotel were sold in a January auction of nearly 1,500 lots.
It also employed between 50 and 60 people when it closed, and the group offered those employees jobs at its half-dozen other hotels in the area.
“As far as I know, everyone was accommodated,” Sullivan said.
Although much of the Clarion was rubble by Wednesday afternoon, Sullivan said in its time the building was fascinating, with its sprawling design and glass-domed indoor pool.
“At the time, that was a spectacular building, and it was a unique design,” she said. “It became an inefficient building as far as heating and air conditioning.”
Now, she said, hotels are designed with efficiency in mind — building up, not out.
If the excavator delivered the Clarion’s death blow, the dump truck acted as its hearse, as a crew from Associated Building Wreckers of Springfield used the giant claw to maneuver twisted metal into the truck bed. It stood there for nearly five decades, and now was its time to go, Shumway said.
“It had a wonderful life,” he said.