Demolition of Camden's Commerce Building to start Saturday

The Commerce Building in the heart of downtown Camden is set to be demolished starting Saturday, a process expected to take about two weeks.

The city's Parking Authority, which owns the one-acre parcel, is turning it into a parking garage. The vacant, eight-story building at the corner of Broadway and Federal Street was built in the 1960s to replace a department store, and sits near City Hall, municipal court, the county court, the Walter Rand Transportation Center, and two PATCO stops.

The demolition will close off traffic to Federal Street between Fifth and Broadway, and Broadway between Federal and Martin Luther King Boulevard, starting Saturday morning and continuing through the morning of Aug. 2. Buses will be detoured around the area, officials say.

The Parking Authority seized the property by eminent domain last year, first making the landowner an offer of minus $200,000 - an offer that would have required payment in exchange for the city's taking the parcel. The Estate of Milton Rubin, a local real estate investor that had been paying taxes based on an assessed value of $1.6 million, sued. The city later returned an offer of $180,000.

After Rubin's estate rejected that offer, the city used eminent domain to acquire the parcel. The amount Rubin's estate will receive for the property will be determined by a jury in future court proceedings.

Other than Penn Pizza Palace, which had been in the building since 1985 but left last year amid the eminent-domain battle, the building has been empty for about 15 years.