And then, it was gone.
Early Wednesday morning, crews with the Florida Department of Transportation demolished the former DoubleTree hotel in Tampa's Westshore district.
The 10-story structure, at 4500 W. Cypress St., came tumbling down around 1:30 a.m. to make way for a staging area for the Westshore Interchange construction project, which is scheduled to start late next year.
The implosion was originally scheduled for Saturday but was postponed due to the storms that moved through the greater Tampa Bay region over the weekend.
During the implosion, the Tampa Police Department set up an exclusion zone around the nine-acre site and closed nearby streets. Traffic on I-275, which borders the south side of the property, was also detoured prior to the detonation.
The demolition of the 50-year-old building is part of a project to fully reconstruct Tampa’s Westshore Interchange and coincides with the ongoing reconstruction of the Howard Frankland Bridge.
The 489-room hotel, located across Cypress Street from Jefferson High School, was shuttered a year ago, according to a notice filed with the state by ARL Tampa Management LLC of Boston.
