What do you do with an old hospital? In Boulder, you recycle it. The whole thing.
For three years, the 250,000-square-foot hospital on Balsam Avenue went untouched. Lights, doors, toilets and medical technology sat quietly inside, ready to be bulldozed and sent to landfills.
City officials knew they couldn’t leave up the massive beige block of a building. The structure, abandoned when its owner decided to consolidate at a different location, didn’t fit into the walkable neighborhood residents wanted at Balsam and Broadway. In trying to convert the hospital for other use — where occupants could get some sunlight, ideally — they knew they would end up taking most of it down anyway.
So the building had to go: all 65 million pounds of it. But where to?
By and large, not the dump. Instead, some of those materials are in the foundations and structures of new city buildings. Others are housed on-site or at resale stores, ready for reuse. The ex-hospital is one of the first major commercial deconstructions in the United States, under the strict conditions sustainability advocates have set for themselves.
Who in their right minds would try to recycle 65 million pounds of old hospital? Enthusiastic sustainability officials, who also happen to be compelled by law. The Boulder City Council approved mandates, effective 2020, to divert 75% of home and commercial structure removal waste from landfills.
The brick-by-brick deconstruction of Boulder’s former five-story community hospital is an early test of a policy idea quickly spreading across Colorado and other recycling-hungry states. Sustainability officials estimate about 35% of current landfill waste statewide is from construction debris; Boulder wants to divert 85% of all formerly landfilled waste by 2025, so finding alternate destinations for old, heavy buildings will be key.