Workers are tearing down the east plaza and parking garage at Cinergy Field. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Even after Cinergy Field is torn down, you might still see little pieces of it in a riverside park, a highway or some other downtown structure.

        The concrete and steel being torn out of Cinergy will be crushed or melted down and recycled for other projects.

        There's a lot of that happening already.

        More than 100 workers have been on the east side of Cinergy for weeks, tear ing down the bridge to Firstar Center, the east plaza and parking garage.

        They are digging the foundation for the new Great American Ball Park at the same time. The ballpark is scheduled to open right next to the existing stadium in time for the 2003 baseball season.

        “We have been prime pushers of recyclables,” Hamilton County Administrator David Krings said.

        Knocking the structure down and hauling it away is only half the job.

        After the last home game this year, crews will have a little more than six months to knock a hole in the stadium, move in home plate and the outfield wall, relocate the foul poles, replace a light tower and shore up the building so the Reds can continue playing there the next two years.

        They'll need every day of it.

        “We're on a very tight schedule,” construction manager Eric Schreiner said.

        The foundation is being dug in the easternmost portion of the new ballpark's footprint, giving crews time to clear the land as the backhoe sweeps around, digging a 2-foot-wide, 20-foot-deep hole that will hold a floodwall.

        A soupy mix of water and a specialized concrete material will jell inside the subterranean floodwall, keeping water out from below ground. A standard wall will rise 20 feet out of the ground to keep aboveground water out of the

        stadium in times of flood.

        From there, crews will begin drilling 3,000 piles through the dirt and into bedrock. The piles will support the stadium itself.

        Mr. Schreiner said digging the foundation and holes for the piles is the most nerve-wracking part of the job. The site has been home to gas stations, tool-and-dye companies and other buildings since 1887.

        Who knows what they'll find under the ground.

        “This is a site with a lot of history to it,” Mr. Schreiner said. “But we've put contingency money aside for any hidden obstructions, since we don't know what's down there.”

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