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Crews demolish building damaged by underground issue in southwest Detroit

Posted at 5:25 PM, Sep 14, 2021
and last updated 2021-09-15 09:26:11-04

(WXYZ) — The building at the center of underground issues in southwest Detroit was pulled apart bit by bit by an excavator.

It took crews about an hour to break it all down.

The structure had not only risen from the ground, but was also unstable and leaning forward.

Some employees from the dispensary felt compelled to stop by.

"We kinda needed to come and say our last goodbye after just months and months of work spending time with our crew and patients, kinda that last moment,” said Monique Boulianne of Stash Detroit.

Stash Detroit opened in 2019. The owner says it had recently been renovated, and now employees will have to start over somewhere new.

"We love southwest Detroit and we love Detroit as a whole, and we just want to make sure that we continue to be here for our community,” said Boulianne.

As for how much the collapse will cost the owner?

“As a licensed medical marijuana facility everything in our building down to—like every single brick, every single camera, everything is insured, so that part is covered, but there’s definitely going to be a lot of steps being taken with DTE and the City of Detroit," said Boulianne.

There are mostly questions surrounding the collapse and very few answers.

Now that the building is demolished officials will finally get a chance to go underground.

"You'll start seeing a lot of equipment coming in over the next few days and starting to peeling back the asphalt and you'll start seeing a lot of contractors from the Department of Public Works," said Hakim Berry, COO of the City of Detroit.

Berry says this was some kind of gradual earth shift; is it global warming, gas or water related? The experts just don't know.

"All those things are on the table, we can't rule anything out," said Berry.