TAMPA - Bill Goss chomped on his half smoked, half soaked stogie and watched as a herd of his mechanical prehistoric beasts grazed the urban landscape.

Translation: Heavy equipment finished the first week of tearing down the structure that will be replaced by a mammoth Ikea furniture store.

As the mist lifted early this morning, the yellow beasts gnawed at the roof and walls of what used to be the Tampa International Center on the southeast corner of Adamo Drive and 22nd Street, drawing groans from the rusting skeleton. Dust poofed into the air.

A 25-year employee of Kimmins, the contractor tearing down the building, Goss was proud of the work going on in front of him. He said his eight-member crew will have the whole warehouse shell pulled down and cleaned up by February.

Today, six big machines are busy on the site. Two front-end loaders pushed debris into piles where two backhoes snatched it and dropped it into huge bins. Two massive shears backhoelike equipment with humongous stone-crab-claw appendages lifted steel girders and snipped them in half so they could fit in the bins.

There's a science to it, Goss said, but he couldn't put a finger on it. Every building is different.

"You got to hit it a certain way to be safe about it," he said. "You got to have some experience, look at the way a building is put together."

Pulling it down the right way can mean creating less work, reducing the risk of injury and finishing on time.

All the work is for Ikea, which hopes to open a 350,000-square-foot store there in 2009. The Swedish home furnishing business opened two stores recently in Florida, one in Sunrise in South Florida and the other in Orlando.

All the preliminary paperwork is done, and construction is expected to begin in the summer.

Plans call for 1,700 parking spaces on the 29-acre lot. Ikea officials said the site will have less asphalt when the store opens than is there now, and plans also call for the planting of 600 trees around the building and a reflective roof to lower the business's energy consumption.

The building will be about half the size of the existing warehouse and include a retention pond between it and the residential area.

So far Ikea's Tampa plans have gone like clockwork. Zoning was approved and deconstruction began on schedule and should be done well before construction begins.

Ikea is a global company that served 458 million customers in 2006.

The Tampa store will feature 10,000 items, a 300-seat restaurant and 50 room settings so customers can visualize how their assemble-at-home furniture will look.

Creating a home for all that can't begin without a little destruction.

"This is an easy one," Goss said as steel and concrete hit the ground 100 yards away. "It's only one story."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.