It may not look like a whole lot has happened at the Marriott site downtown, but it is a very complex undertaking. One anonymous reader close to the project wrote in to describe the work being done on site in the past couple months:
“Foundation work is progressing nicely despite the weather. Contractors have installed steel H piles to [the] bedrock along the perimeter. Wood cribbing has been installed within the piles. The wood panels slide into the web of the H. The cribbing is backfilled and remains forever, securing the bridge area once complete. Another contractor is drilling tie backs to hold the cribbing in place. The rods are grouted in place to a depth of 20 feet or more. The rods anchor the wall in place so the structure can be built within the opened area. Caissons will be drilled in a few days. The caissons are massive open pipes that are socketed into bedrock, 25 to 30 feet below grade. The hollow caissons are filled with concrete and rebar. Concrete beams will be formed from the top of each caisson similar to floor joists. Then a few million tons of hotel will be constructed on top. The cantilevered design is impressive and makes for some very difficult design constraints. This building is a big sail that is side heavy.”
To paraphrase, and hopefully I have this right, the bridge is being secured by H-shaped steel bars, wood cribbing and filling material, and steel tiebacks are being used to stabilize the retaining wall. Per wikipedia, grouted tiebacks can be constructed as steel rods drilled through the cribbing out into the soil or bedrock on the other side. Grout is then pumped under pressure into the tieback anchor holes so that the rods can utilize soil resistance to prevent tieback pullout and wall destabilization. With the bridge and retaining wall established, caissons can now be drilled. Caissons are piles drilled to a sufficient depth to allow the weight of the hotel to be transferred from the weak soil above, to the stronger bedrock 25-30 feet below. The weight will be spread out over the piles with concrete beams on top of the caissons, allowing for the hotel above to be stable and secure.
The photos don’t show the level of work involved with building the retaining wall, and as of April 5th it doesn’t look like the caissons were being drilled just yet. But those look like caisson liners next to the excavator, so pile drilling will be underway soon.
The $32 million, 10-story, 159-room hotel is slated for an opening in Q3 of 2016 (July-September). The hotel will include a fitness center, a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating, and 3,000 sq ft of meeting space.
The hotel has been designed by Atlanta-based Cooper Carry Architecture and development is a joint venture of Urgo Hotels of Bethesda and Ensemble Hotel Partners, a division of Ensemble Investments. Urgo’s portfolio includes at least 32 other hotels totaling 4,500 hotel rooms. Interior design will be handled by Design Continuum, W.H. Lane of Binghamton is the general contractor, and Rimland Development contributed the land to the joint venture and is a partner. Long Island-based Rimland was the original firm that pitched the project in 2008 as the “Hotel Ithaca”, before the old Holiday Inn downtown went independent.
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
Huzzah!