201 College is moving right along. W. H. Lane has been charging ahead at a rapid clip in order to have the 44-unit apartment building ready for occupancy in August. the front (west) half is further in the construction process – fireproof Georgia-Pacific DensGlass fiberglass mat sheathing, coated and sealed a pitch black air/vapor barrier (Carlisle Barriseal?), and layered with Dow Thermax polyiso insulation boards. The Thermax is coated in a reflective outer layer to repel incoming solar radiation and keep the building cool during the summer. Or at least, that’s what one of the construction guys told me. Some windows have been fitted into the structure on the lower floors.
The back half is not as far along. The northeast and east walls remain bare steel studs, while the southeast wall is just getting its DensGlass mats installed. The paired window layout might seem a little unusual, but many of the units will utilize a “mezzanine” intermediary floor to increase the living space in each unit.
One detail that has appeared to have changed from the images on file here are the stairwell windows above the front entrance. The drawings show one square window for each floor, while the finished building will have a pair of smaller square windows.
The front facade might seem a bit bland at the moment, but a plethora of exterior finishes should give the building a more visually interesting appearance – A large Sherwin-Williams Iron Ore (aka fancy off-black) metal canopy above the entrance, and fiber cement panels in shades of Allura Snow White, S-W Gauntlet Grey, and S-W Chinese Red, as well as woven bamboo siding. A stucco aggregate will be applied to exposed foundation sections (when you’re spending $10 million, you can afford the real deal over DryVit), and white cedar panels with a clear protective finish will be used for canopy ceilings and architectural screens. Long story short, variety of colors and materials should help break up the mass and make it look less overbearing.
With August just a scant two months away, we’ll have an idea of how nice the final product looks soon enough.
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
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