Odd Fellows Hall packing up and moving

The all-seeing eye engraved above the main entry of historic Odd Fellows Hall soon will have a different view of downtown Salt Lake City.

Construction crews are preparing to uproot the 117-year-old building from the south side of Market Street and move it onto the waiting vacant lot across the street and to the east.

"We're going to pack it up and move it," said Alan Rindlisbacher, marketing director for Layton Construction, simply yet accurately summing up the formidable task.

The 48-foot-tall, three-story brick building is being moved to make room for a new U.S. District Court building directly adjacent to the west of the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse — Odd Fellows Hall's current neighbor to the east.

In late May or early June, Odd Fellows Hall will embark on a three- to four-day journey to its future home.

Crews plan to move the building west onto a vacant lot, rotate it 180 degrees so it faces south and then return it to its original location. The building then will be slid north across Market Street and directly east next to the Takashi sushi bar.

"Everything is done in 90-degree movements," Rindlisbacher said. "If it were a car, we could just swing it around and back it right in there. But this is an old, unreinforced masonry building."

Crews currently are in the packing phase of the project — removing glass from windows and filling the openings with masonry; and installing blocks and supports inside the building to help stabilize its unreinforced walls.

When that's done, the building will be fitted with an exterior steel casing. Steel I-beams about 130 feet long will be inserted underneath the building, along with 64-foot crossing beams, Rindlisbacher said.

Sandy-based Layton Construction has enlisted the help of heavy-haul transportation and rigging company Emmert International to assist with the move. Emmert specializes in difficult moves, with a resume that includes the relocation of Howard Hughes' gigantic aircraft, "The Spruce Goose," as well as the Hubbell telescope and the 3.2 million-pound Fairmont Hotel in San Antonio.

"We do just about anything no one else wants to mess with," said Rick Albrecht, an Emmert project supervisor.

The larger steel beams will have jacks in them, which will lift the building enough for Emmert workers to position 56 of their transportation dollies — each with eight mining tires and a jack — under it to make it mobile.