Ithacating in Cornell Heights

201 College Avenue is reaching for the sky – when these photos were taken about a week and half ago, the structural steel was as high as the third floor, so there’s still two more floors to be boxed out by the H-beams. Although only five floors, the mezzanine-approach to maximizing square footage means that the units on the third through fifth floors are quite tall, 16 feet from sub-floor to sub-floor, 70 feet for the whole building.

The basement level, which only occupies the west half of the building (the east half is slab-on-grade) has been fleshed out with reinforced concrete walls – the windows on the street corner will look into a gym and game room, while the two pocket windows on the northwest corner will look into the mechanical room. The blue boards on the concrete are rigid styrofoam panels used for insulation and moisture protection.

It looks like some wall framing is underway on the first floor for the three-bedroom units – those CMU walls face the stairwell, and the exterior walls of the building itself. The interior unit walls will likely be a more typical lightweight steel frame.

There’s been some documentation floating around that suggests an early working name for 201 College Avenue was “The Heustis Lofts”, Heustis (sometimes Huestis) Street being the original name of College Avenue. However, it doesn’t seem the moniker was officially adopted.