Demolition Contractors in Long Beach, CA

Property owners looking for demolition contractors in Long Beach are often dealing with buildings that have already lived through a lot. The city incorporated in 1897, counted 466,742 residents in 2020, and sits on top of the Newport-Inglewood Fault. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake of 1933 killed 120 people, and most of the damage fell on unreinforced masonry buildings, especially schools. That history still shows up in the buildings we are asked to take down or strip out today.

Neighborhoods with different ages

Long Beach grew in pieces. Belmont Heights, Belmont Shore and Naples were laid out by J.W. Bixby's Alamitos Land Company as oceanfront communities. Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos and North Long Beach were subdivided from Rancho Los Cerritos after Jotham Bixby died in 1916. A 1920s Spanish house in California Heights comes apart very differently from a postwar tract house in North Long Beach. Older homes may have raised wood floors, lath and plaster and brick chimneys, while later houses tend to sit on slabs that have to be broken out and hauled.

Retrofit or remove

A 1986 state law on unreinforced masonry led to many Long Beach buildings being retrofitted or demolished. The city's Seismic Resiliency Program now focuses on soft-story buildings, and Wikipedia counts 3,226 of them holding about 26,000 units. When an owner is weighing a retrofit against a teardown, partial demolition is often part of either answer: removing a damaged carport level, stripping a ground floor for new framing, or clearing out a rear structure.

Get a Free Estimate

Interior work near the coast

Not every Long Beach job is a teardown. In Belmont Shore and Naples, where lots are small and houses sit close together, a lot of our work is interior demolition: taking kitchens and baths down to studs, removing old plaster, and opening walls for new framing. Summer fog and a steady sea breeze keep temperatures mild, about 65 degrees on average, which makes it comfortable to work year-round, but that same breeze carries dust, so we bag debris and keep it covered until it leaves the site.

Oil, ground and old foundations

Oil was found on Signal Hill in 1921, and Long Beach completely surrounds that city today. The Wilmington Oil Field, mostly in Long Beach, was developed in 1932. On some lots near the old fields we find buried concrete, abandoned pads or piping when a slab comes up, so we look at the parcel history before we quote and plan the excavation in stages.

Before work starts

The South Coast AQMD requires an asbestos survey by a certified consultant before any demolition, with notification 10 working days ahead, and state law bars a city from issuing a demolition permit until it has a copy of that notice. We arrange the survey, the utility shut-offs and the sewer cap so the city's Development Services permit is not held up. With about 12 inches of rain a year, most of it from December through March, we also plan erosion and dust control around the wet months. Call (213) 377-6198 to set up a site visit.