BANGOR – As city and business leaders, former employees and the merely curious looked on Friday morning, a Cianbro Corp. worker in a large yellow excavator began taking down the Holiday Inn on Main Street.

They came to watch history in the making – or unmaking, depending on perspective.

For more than three decades, the Holiday Inn-Civic Center was a home away from home for generations of businesspeople, basketball tournament fans and other visitors.

It is one of two hotel properties Penn National Gaming Inc. acquired as the home for a major project here – a $131 million complex that will house, among other things, a gaming floor featuring up to 1,500 slot machines, a seven-story hotel and a four-level parking garage. The new racino is slated to open in the summer of 2008.

The other hotel, the Main Street Inn, was razed last June.

The new racino will be huge by Bangor standards. It will take up most of the 8-acre site that Penn National acquired last year at a cost of about $7 million.

To give a sense of its scale, Hollywood Slots spokeswoman Amy Kenney said the gaming floor and “back of the house,” or area for support operations, will be roughly the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Besides a few local dignitaries, Friday’s demolition drew some former Holiday Inn employees, Alice Poor of Kenduskeag among them.

Poor worked as a waitress for 23 years at the Holiday Inn’s Irish-style restaurant called Killarney’s, a popular venue for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. She retired in 1997.

While at the demolition site Friday, Poor picked up a souvenir: a piece of concrete from the inn that she wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. “There are a lot of memories here,” she said.

“I’m going to cover it with cloth and make a doorstop,” Poor said.

“I believe the word is progress, right? Tear it down and make one bigger,” said Poor, who has been following the project’s development.

The inn, which dated from the early 1970s, was expanded from its original 60 guest rooms to 121. It featured the Bounty Taverne, a nightclub that served as a popular meeting place.

Former employee Marnie Wirta of Bangor met her husband, Mark Wirta, while both were employed at the hotel.

Marnie Wirta was an assistant manager. Her husband was a doorman at the Bounty.

“It’s sad. It’s been here such a long time,” Marnie Wirta said.

Former dishwasher Jeff McLain of Bangor also dropped by.

“It was a nice place to work,” he said, adding that the discounts on meals were among his favorite employee perks.

He came, he said, to watch the “man toys,” or heavy machinery used in the project.

Though not much of a gambler, McLain said he would be back to see the finished project next summer.

“I’ll definitely check it out,” he said.

Clarence Dyer, also of Bangor, came by “just to watch and see what’s going on.”

A retired railroadman, Dyer recalls when the Bangor waterfront was primarily a busy rail yard.

“It’s all gone now,” he said. Only the tracks remain.

“I never was one to go to the Bounty, but my children did,” Dyer said. “They’re all grown up and in their 50s now.”

Demolition and excavation are expected to take six to eight weeks, Kenney said. Construction of the new facility will start next month.

Kenney said Cianbro would recycle as much of the demolition debris as possible. Wood and metal are being sorted out for reuse. The company also hopes to use crushed concrete as fill, but that will require permission from state environmental regulators.

“It’s going to be a beautiful new facility,” said City Council Chairman Richard Greene, one of several City Hall and Bangor Region Chamber officials who stopped by Main Street to watch the start of the Holiday Inn’s demolition.

“It’ll definitely be the cornerstone of this part of Main Street,” Greene said.

“Look at old Paul,” Greene said of the Paul Bunyan statue across Main Street from the Holiday Inn site. “He’s still smiling.”