A downtown Akron landmark is slowly coming down.Four to five workers from Louisville-based Eslich Wrecking Co. will work for about six weeks to demolish the Beacon Journal’s 10-level, 381-space parking deck at Cedar and South High streets.The demolition got under way Oct. 31 and should be completed by mid-December, said Richard C. Eslich, project manager.The demolition will cost about $60,000, said Mike Dean, the Beacon Journal’s building and facilities manager.The parking deck probably will produce up to 800 tons of steel and about 3,640 tons of concrete, most of which will be recycled, Eslich said.The steel beams will be sold to a steel manufacturer to be melted and turned into new steel. The concrete is being hauled to Eslich’s crushing facility at the former site of General Tire near Brittain Road in East Akron, he said.The crushed concrete is used as a base for buildings and new roads, he said.His company typically is hauling 14 truckloads of concrete per day, each with 12 to 14 tons, to the East Akron location, he said.The work is progressing smoothly, and the only surprise was how thick the concrete was in the structure that opened in August 1959, Eslich said.When the demolition is done, the two ground-level parking areas of the deck will remain with 60 parking spaces, Dean said.The company also has more than 100 parking spaces north of the main office building at High and East Exchange streets, at its Erie warehouse on South Broadway and on Wheeler Alley next to its production building.Although the company has 411 staffers, its 169 permanent parking spaces are sufficient because Beacon Journal employees work different shifts, he said.Dean said that the deck had been shedding pieces of concrete for years and its old-technology steel construction would have been expensive to repair.The biggest problems with the deck were corrosion of reinforced steel embedded in concrete and freeze-thaw action in the winters, he said.The steel was deteriorating mainly at the deck expansion joints and where water penetrated concrete slabs around floor drains, he said.It was last repaired in 2006, and that work was good for five years, he said.It would have cost about $500,000 to get two to three more years of life out of the parking deck and $4 million to $5 million to improve it to last another 20 to 30 years, he said.The parking deck cost $600,000 to build. That is equal to about $4.5 million today.“The old girl was just too tired to continue,” Dean said.Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.