'Awesome' collapse impresses the crowds

Cheers erupted from a crowd gathered at the corner of 200 West and North Temple as the former Key Bank tower fell Saturday morning and a plume of dark dust billowed from the site.

Within seconds, the dust plume spread to the area where a few dozen spectators watched, some wearing dust masks.

"That was awesome," Chrislyn Barnes, 26, of Salt Lake City, said as she quickly donned her dust mask. "I'm very impressed it came down so fast."

Her friend, Joel Dayton, called the implosion "incredible" as the two watched a replay on their camera. "That's so cool."

Barnes, who works downtown at Deseret Book, has been watching the demolition in preparation for the City Creek Center.

"If I'm here I want to see it live," she said. "It's totally a process," she said of the mall demolitions under way in anticipation of the new City Creek Center. "It's a wonderful project for Salt Lake City. The downtown has great potential."

At 200 West and North Temple, children climbed a tree to get a better view. A group of students from Brigham Young University waved signs reading "ka-boom."

Ryan Lund, 23, saw the implosion announced on TV, and "the news told us not to go, so we said, 'We'll go."'

Candace Funk, 20, added, "We wanted to say goodbye to the Key Bank building."

Plus, the BYU students said they could use some MySpace and Face Book material.

A few spectators were staying at the Radisson Hotel across the street. Becky Kawano decided to watch after receiving a flier from her hotel indicating there might be a "slight vibration."

"I've never seen a building (imploded) live," she said. "I thought it would be interesting to see."

Mike Ambrose, 58, of Magna was looking for a repeat of the "spectacular" show he saw when the Murray smokestacks went down seven years ago.

"They had a water cannon to control the dust, but it went right down the street," he said of that demolition project.

As Ambrose and his wife, Magdalena, cleared out of the area following the blast, he smiled and said, "It was better than the Murray towers."