City officials celebrated the beginning of a new chapter in downtown Long Beach Saturday as they welcomed the demolition of the old Long Beach Superior Courthouse and began the first stages toward a new Civic Center.

Demolition of the old courthouse at 415 West Ocean Boulevard begins today and will take approximately two and a half months to complete.

Work on the courthouse began 90 days ago with hazardous materials abatement. Mayor Robert Garcia said demolition will be done by the “ultra high-reach excavator,” one of the largest cranes in North America.

The high-reach excavator boasts a 182-foot boom mounted onto a 500,000-pound excavator and a 15-foot-long, 15,000-pound shear.

“It’s going to help tear down this building and in fact you’re going to see over the course of the next 30 days, almost the entirety of this facility come down, so it’s going to be rather quick,” Garcia said.

State officials considered the 330,000-square-foot facility, which opened in 1958, to be one of the worst courthouses in California in terms of security, overcrowding and physical condition. The old courthouse, replaced by the Gov. George Deukmejian Courthouse in 2013, is the site for the Civic Center Project.

Mayor Robert Garcia, along with State Senator Ricardo Lara, D-Long Beach and Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, expressed great enthusiasm for the long-awaited project.

“This project and development is something that has been long desired, advocated for in the community,” Garcia said. “Today is the beginning of a many-year process of constructing this site, developing these new parcels and also bringing new life and added viability toward downtown and this community.”

The new Civic Center will be home to Lincoln Park, a new City Hall and headquarters for the Port of Long Beach.

The last phase of the project will be the replacement of the current City Hall, which will serve as a new hotel and retail space, as well as housing throughout the area.

The mayor thanked Senator Lara for his part in authoring SB 562, which successfully secured funds for the project.

“I was very proud to author the 562 that creates the mechanism that allows this project to come to fruition and again showing how the state and the city can work together to ensure that we not only revolutionize the new Long Beach skyline, but that we continue to work together to ensure that we provide quality projects in the state of California, and create good paying jobs for working men and women here in Long Beach and throughout the state,” Lara said.

For Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, seeing the beginning stages of what will become the site of the new Civic Center during her last term is like going out with a bang.

“I’m very thankful, it’s definitely a great way to go out,” Lowenthal said. “It’s one thing to have great ideas and to pull community members together and really dream out loud, but it’s another to stand here and see that it’s actually happening.”

Lowenthal also pointed out that the City of Long Beach always looks toward helping the environment and the community.

“Over 90% of the materials will be recycled, that’s very Long Beach. We can tear things down but we want to do it right,” Lowenthal said. Nearly 50 percent of workers hired for this project are local hires and 25 percent are veterans or disadvantaged workers.

City officials are taking the necessary steps to reduce the impact on the public, with Lowenthal emphasizing that although work on the courthouse began 90 days ago, she doesn’t believe the city has caused 90 days of grief.

The Civic Center project is expected to be completed in June 2019.

Demolition process of the courthouse can be viewed at www.lbciviccenter.com.