This one’s short and sweet for the moment due to time constraints. A generalized description of the latest progress can be found on the Voice here, and Cornell’s bi-weekly progress report is here. A more thorough rundown was given in January’s update here.
Most of the curtain walls are complete, only the stud walls on the northwest face are still exposed. Sunshades have been installed on the outside of each floor. The bluestone and limestone veneers will be apply to the base columns and walls at some point later this year. From the outside looking in, it looks like good progress is being made on finishing-out the interior of the new wing. A write-up can be found as a part of last week’s Voice article here.
Chiang O’Brien of Ithaca is the architect for the two-phase, $55 million project, and the general contractor is The Pike Company of Syracuse. The new wing will open late this summer, and the second phase, which is primarily renovations of the existing wings, will run from this summer to late summer 2017.
So there are really two sets of photos here. The first set contains photos that I’ve taken from outside the fence. The second set of photos are from inside the fence, and come courtesy of Nick Robertson and Jocelyn Garrison at Welliver, the general contractor in charge of the project. Their photos are much more visually telling than mine, and a big thanks goes out to them both.
Currently, work is focusing on drilling piles, and forming and pouring the foundation walls. In some sections, foundation walls are being formed. Concrete pours as liquid and dries into a hard solid; forms are a solid barrier (typically wood or durable plastic) that simply forces the concrete to dry in the shape it’s supposed to. After the concrete has been poured and dries into the desired shape, the forms are removed and moved down to the next section. Work on the foundation walls appears to be progressing from west to east along the excavated and pile-driven footprint for building 7.
If you look closely at the Welliver photos, you can see the steel wire mesh that will be embedded in the concrete and provide stability for the walls. The additional steps on the forms may have to do with stepping the foundation up along the slope of the site.
Set two:
It occurred to me, while taking photos of the “Lake House project”, a mansion underway at 1325 Taughannock last weekend, that there’s a babbling brook just north of the garage, with a small waterfall.
It’s okay to be jealous. I am.
Since January, most of the wood shingle siding has been attached, although some of the Green Guard Housewrap is still visible. Some sections of the foundation and concrete column bases have been covered with stone veneer, but the large, partially chiseled rock on-site suggests some genuine stone is also being used (when one can afford to take out a $2.25 million construction loan for a single-family home, why not splurge). The front door is still a plywood sheet, but windows have been fully fitted from what could be seen from the road. A small section of the roof remains exposed felt paper, but will be finished with what are likely to be metal sheets, based off of New Energy Works‘ render.
Quoting a press release from New Energy Works:
“Settled on a cliff above Cayuga Lake, the Lake House project is a full timber frame home which will use over 500 timbers to create 4,880 square feet of living space for a growing family. The interior frame will be crafted of kiln-dried Douglas Fir, while the exterior will use fresh sawn Douglas Fir with kiln-dried curves. Two distinct bowstring trusses with steel bottom chords are featured in the kitchen to support the second floor above.”
Photos from the timber frame raising last summer can be found here. If anything, the side that faces the lake is even more impressive. Here’s a render of the “back side”, the view from the lake:
This will probably be the last visit. The house should be completed by the end of May, and it’ll be a little unsettling to take photos when it’s occupied. I’m not sure a feature in the Voice, even if permitted by the owner, would have the allure of “The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous“, or just piss readers off. At least two comparably grand lakeside homes are planned along Taughannock Boulevard and Maplewood Road.
Some readers love it, others hate it, but Texas Roadhouse is well on its way to a May opening. The steakhouse chain has made pretty good progress on their 7,193 SF restaurant on Elmira Road across from Ollie’s and the Vitamin Shoppe. In fact, a small temporary space next to the Vitamin Shoppe is where Texas Roadhouse is conducting interviews for the 170 staff it plans to have at opening.
The lap cedar siding is coming along, covering up the Tyvek housewrap from most angles (brick and metal flashing will cover what’s left). USG Securock glass-mat sheathing has been applied to the exterior walls facing and near the kitchen/food prep area for fire safety – the sheets are noncombustible and serve as a form of passive fire protection. The roof has been covered with felt paper, but no shingles have been attached yet. Closer to the ground, brick veneer has been applied to the base of the eastern and northern walls. I’m not sure what’s going on next to the street-facing foundation wall; but that is where the entrance ramp will be going.
Texas Roadhouse corporate is developing the site, leasing the land from plaza owner DDR Corp. of Ohio. GreenbergFarrow of suburban Chicago is serving as an architectural consultant for the project, and Edger Enterprises of Elmira is the general contractor.
Not much left to go here. 619 West State Street, the future home of HOLT Architects, is near the finish line. The wood siding has been attached, although it’s hard to tell if the (dormer? periscope window?) will be sided with wood or the off-white metal paneling like most of the plaza. It doesn’t look like the rooftop solar panels have been installed yet, but they’re on the to-do list. Exterior and interior work is a little further behind on the rental portions of the building, where two smaller commercial spaces will be available to tenants. Someone from HOLT feel free to comment, but I think one of the spaces is already spoken for.
I can vouch from being that that HOLT’s interior space is nearly complete, and looks great. The lime green paint in the entrance area stands out and gives it a certain liveliness. I was tempted to take photos, but there were multiple people working inside finishing up HOLT’s space last Saturday, and I felt uneasy with the idea of interrupting for an impromptu tour. So I was that guy, staring inside, awkwardly holding his camera phone, before giving in to preconceived social mores and leaving them be. I guess I’m a lot more comfortable bothering people when they’re outdoors.
Tompkins Trust Company is providing the financing, and local company McPherson Builders is in charge of general construction. The project cost for the net-zero energy structure comes in at about $482,500, based off the construction loan on file with the county. More discussion about the net-zero features can be found here, and HOLT’s move to the West End here.
Work on the new Holiday Inn Express at 371 Elmira Road is progressing. the foundation work is currently underway. It looks like they’re going with a shallow, slab-on-grade foundation that spreads the weight of a building all around the concrete slab. The formwork’s been done, and rebar criss-crosses the yet-to-be-poured concrete. The rebar mesh is a reinforcement for the concrete when it gets poured, helping to prevent cracks that may form in the concrete from spreading throughout the foundation and causing major damage. The blue tubes are a part of the under-slab utilities. Elsewhere on the site, it looks like stacks of Tembec and Millar Western Canadian lumber are being used to assemble wood trusses that will be used in the hotel’s wooden frame.
The 4-story, 79-room hotel is expected to open late this summer. Rudra Management and Rosewood Hotels (Jayesh Patel) of suburban Buffalo is the developer.
First progress report of many. As Collegetown projects go, Novarr-Mackesey’s plan for 209-215 Dryden stands out for a number of reasons.
For one, it calls for a six-story plus basement, 76,200 SF academic/research building to be 100% occupied by Cornell University’s Executive MBA program. No residential or mixed-use to be found here, and given its primary occupancy of office workers and Executive MBA students (who tend to be older, deep-pocketed and will only be coming up from New York a few weeks of the year), not the typical Collegetown crowd either.
For two, this is one of those rare occasions where a Collegetown building under construction is not designed by local firm Jagat Sharma. ikon.5 Architects of Princeton, a John Novarr favorite, penned the steel-and-glass box with its multicolored steel mullions.
By the city’s estimate (from the Site Plan Review form), the construction itself will cost $12 million. From construction loan paperwork filed with the county in December, the total cost, including hard and soft construction costs, will be $15,912,823.33. Wells Fargo Northwest is the lender.
In September, the county approved a payment-in-lieu-of taxes (PILOT)-like tax abatement, taxing the finished building at $5.2 million plus 2% per year. The amount is still more than the ~$1 million value of the original, unimproved properties on the site, and it comes with a 50-year guarantee that Cornell won’t be able to but the property and make it tax-exempt, something that was hinted at a few times in the TCIDA application.
209-215 Dryden will host about 420 Cornell MBA students and staff when it opens in late Spring 2017, later increasing to 600 as Cornell fills out the rest of the square footage. The basement and first three floors will be dedicated classroom/academic space (including 90-person LGI classrooms), and the upper three floors will be office space. A large three-story atrium will mark the building’s primary entrance. At opening, it will be fully leased by Cornell, but only 70% occupied. Sounds like plenty of short-term flex space.
Since December, the site has been cleared of weeds and any remaining debris, and it looks like foundation prep work (excavation) might be starting on the far side of the property away from the streets. Some steel H-beams have been brought to the site, possibly for use in shoring up the site along the excavation perimeter. The H-beams are drilled or driven in at regular intervals, and hold the soil back while the foundation is excavated. A pile driver, tubular piles, an excavator, and a Dynapac compaction roller are on-site. So, the primary duties at hand appear to be excavation of the new building’s foundation, and shoring up the soil surrounding it so that the site remains stable while that work is going on.
As the signage on Novarr’s corner building suggests, Hayner Hoyt Corporation of Syracuse will be the general contractor.
The street was closed off when I stopped by the Dryden South mixed-use site to take a few updated photo. From the flatbed of a semi, loads of wood were being craned into the project site. Asking one of the construction crew walking nearby, he said they were wood form to be used in concrete pours. Forms provide stability and shape while the concrete hardens, and they provide support to the steel reinforcing rods (rebar) embedded in the concrete. Some of those rods can be seen poking out of the concrete pillars in the photos below; they’ll tie into the walls as they’re built up.
Most of the current work appears to be focused on the first level, where the new Kraftee’s bookstore will be located. The ground-level exterior walls (Concrete Masonry Units [CMU] from the looks of it) have been built out and the interior walls are being assembled. It shouldn’t be long before Dryden South really starts to move skyward. The six-story building is expected to open for occupancy before classes start in August.
LeChase Construction is the general contractor, and local firm Jagat Sharma is the architect.
Now that the fairly complicated foundation work has been completed, things are moving along at a good pace over at the Marriott construction site in downtown Ithaca. Concrete has now been poured up to the seventh floor of the ten-story building. USG Securock glass-mat sheathing panels are being attached to exterior metal stud walls erected over the lowest levels. The floors are covered in plastic sheets from about the fourth level down, a sign of sprinkler fitting and major utilities roughs-in underway (given the major heat wave in the medium-range forecast, they may not be needed much longer).
A story I’ve heard through the grapevine is that Marriott worked with developer Urgo Hotels to design a new room design format for this Ithaca project. The rooms will be at a premium price point, but somewhat smaller than most comparable hotel rooms, so Marriott is approaching the hotel and the rooms themselves with new styling concepts that make efficient use of the space while maintaining a high-end look and feel to each hotel room. Marriott has a history of working with Urgo for new design areas, so if done well, this will be yet another proverbial feather in their cap.
This project gets a lot of flack from certain angles for not being “Ithaca-like”, but given that the site had been a small, awkwardly-accessed parking lot since the Green Street garage was erected in the early 1970s, it’s a huge, huge improvement. The hotel’s 160 rooms are expected to average occupancy between 70 and 80% (the market average is closer to 60%, but new hotels and downtown locations tend to have higher occupancy rates). That translates to 112 to 128 travelers on any typical day who will literally be able to walk right out onto the Commons, eating at restaurants, shopping at the boutique stores and spending their dollars on the “Ithaca-like” businesses that people hold near and dear. Not only does the project create dozens of jobs downtown, it has a real stabilizing effect on other businesses by offering a steady stream of well-heeled customers that will buoy bottom lines and be an asset to shopkeepers and restaurateurs as they ride out slow periods. For nearby businesses, there’s reason to look forward to its August opening.
The $32 million hotel was designed by Cooper Carry Architecture of Atlanta, and Binghamton-based William H. Lane Inc. is the general contractor.
Ithacating in Cornell Heights 
