Demolition of Glendale hotel begins to make way for Nordstrom

There will be no wrecking ball — much less dynamite — as the Golden Key Hotel checks out of Glendale to make way for a new Nordstrom department store at the Americana at Brand shopping center.

Workers started cautiously taking apart the three-story, 55-room hotel on Colorado Street on Thursday, said Paul Kurzawa, chief operating officer of mall owner Caruso Affiliated.

Workers are using an excavator and hand tools on the hotel; a vacant brick building next door will be dismantled entirely by hand. The goal is to avoid creating a lot of dust and racket, or accidentally whacking any of the Americana’s existing buildings, which neighbor the hotel on three sides.

“We are taking out anything not permanently affixed, and then certain walls and then the roof and the rest of the walls,” Kurzawa said. “It will be very orderly.”

The Golden Key, which was built in 1968, closed at the end of December.

Developer Rick Caruso acquired the Golden Key Hotel last year as part of a bid to expand his company’s Americana shopping center in downtown Glendale. Hotel owner Ray Patel initially resisted the sale but settled with Caruso in February for an undisclosed amount.

Demolition of the two buildings should be completed by the end of February, Kurzawa said. Caruso Affiliated will then prepare a pad where Seattle-based Nordstrom will build a three-story, 135,000-square-foot store. Nordstrom will lease the site from Caruso and own its structure, which will be adorned with the 1920s-era bricks salvaged from the smaller building.

The Nordstrom store in the Glendale Galleria, which lies across Central Avenue from the Americana, will continue to operate until the new Nordstrom is ready to open in fall 2013, Kurzawa said.

Bloomingdale’s department store, meanwhile, plans to open a 120,000-square-foot branch in the former Mervyns space on Brand Boulevard in the Galleria, also by fall 2013.

roger.vincent@latimes.com