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Buildings
Queens Conversion: Transforming a Factory into High-End Condominiums
(newyork.construction.com,
February 2006 issue)
By Diane
Greer
A hulking eight-story, 484,000-sq.-ft.
factory in Queens - originally built to house a printing facility
for Metropolitan Life Insurance - is undergoing a major reconstruction
to create residential units.
The project, developed by the Andalex
Group of Manhattan, is one of the latest in a wave of conversions
of vintage commercial buildings in New York City to residential
uses, as well as a prime example of the redevelopment push
under way in the borough's Long Island City district along
the East River. The building's previous owner was Eagle Electric,
a company recently bought and relocated by an out-of-state
firm.
When completed later this year, the
$80 million condominium building will have 237 lofts and 17
artist studios, all featuring 14- to 17-ft. ceilings, at prices
ranging from $485,000 to more than $2 million. Occupancy of
the lower five floors of the structure is slated for September,
while completion of the building is planned for November.
Located between Thompson Avenue and
Court Square, the triangular shape of the 1920s structure
is reminiscent of Manhattan's landmark Flatiron Building.
The old factory's unique character and the site's proximity
to Manhattan and public transit stations attracted Andalex
to the property.
"We looked at this building and
said, 'What a great place to live,'" said Alex Silverman,
Andalex's COO.
The poured-in-place concrete building
has 12-in. slab floors that were designed to shoulder 250-lb.-per-sq.-ft.
loads. Giant mushroom columns support the floors, and in many
spots, ridges from the clapboard forming system used to construct
the building are visible.
The strength of the floors enabled the
project team to use two backhoes on the inside of the building
during the six-month demolition phase.
"We had in excess of a couple of
million dollars worth of structural demolition that had to
take place to reconfigure window openings, remove square footage
out of the building, and fill in with new structure,"
said Eric McGovern, president of Pavarini McGovern of New
York, the construction manager.
Part of the demolition task was geared
toward expanding the courtyard area. The team removed staircases
and bathrooms as well as part of the original courtyard's
floor, an effort that required a bracing plan for the remaining
structure. New York-based Cantor Seinuk Group, the structural
engineer, designed the bracing plan in coordination with Pavarini
McGovern and the demolition contractor.
Other demolition tasks provided cutouts
to satisfy light and air requirements and stripped nonessential
items from the building.
"We demolished roughly 50,000 sq.
ft.," said Bill Bretschger, Andalex's director of construction.
In removing the spaces on the lower
floors and courtyard, zoning rules allowed Andalex to swap
that developable floor area to the upper floors, where it
expanded the sixth floor by 6,000 sq. ft. and the seventh
and eighth floors, which had housed mechanical space and water
tanks, by 22,000 sq. ft. each. The team is also extending
the vertical travel of the elevators, which previously stopped
on the sixth floor, to the eighth floor. It is installing
four new elevators in the effort.
Project crews are using two of the original
elevators, which the team retained for the duration of construction,
in order to alleviate vertical transportation congestion.
The team will also use the crane expanding the upper floors
to preload heavy and bulky materials onto other floors.
The team also had to reconfigure the
lobby entrance along Thompson Avenue due to the changing elevation
of the roadway, which rises from the first floor at the west
end of the building to the second floor at the east end. The
elevation of the lobby entrance, located in the middle of
the building, falls between the two floors.
The team was able to address the uneven
layout and offer access to the second-floor lobby by removing
a portion of the existing second-floor slab, installing a
depressed slab at the elevation of the roadway, and building
a series of stairs. Structural steel frames support the new
elements.
When completed, the second floor will
feature the 5,000-sq.-ft. lobby containing a 10 ft. by 10
ft. raised-hearth, stone-base fireplace and 16-ft.-high floor-to-ceiling
windows overlooking the 6,000-sq.-ft. landscaped courtyard.
A spiral staircase will lead down to a 3,000-sq.-ft. game
room and 6,000-sq.-ft. health club on the first floor. Art
elements in the lobby and public spaces will include use of
old electric breaker panels and other industrial equipment
found onsite.
Restoration work is also under way on
the building exterior. Once repairs are completed, crews will
apply a stucco skim coat and paint. A 4,800-sq.-ft. roof deck
on top will provide exceptional views of Manhattan.
Andalex worked with Brian Callahan of
New York-based Kondylis Designs, an interior design firm,
to create a mix of studio and one- to four-bedroom lofts.
Due to the unique nature of the building and shape of the
floor plates, that design process yielded 122 different layouts.
Callahan leveraged the depth of the
floor plates and heights of the ceilings to produce oversized
apartments. The spacing of columns and the size of the window
bays, which are 12 by 22 ft., determined the dimensions for
each unit.
The residences will have 9- by 16.5-ft.
window units and master bathrooms measuring 8 by 8 ft., featuring
walk-in showers with freestanding tubs. The walls of bathroom
and home office areas will use translucent Panelite panels,
extending daylight into interior rooms. Lofts on the seventh
and eighth floors will feature large terraces.
To mitigate noise from an active railyard
next to the site and an elevated subway line, units on the
sides of the building facing those features will have "sound
pressure level" windows. A portion of the Court Square
side of the structure will also have the special windows.
The mix of units will include 17 artist
studios below grade on the railyard side of the building.
Meanwhile, the structure's first floor will include 17,000
sq. ft. of retail space. The developer is also seeking a variance
to build a 40,000-sq.-ft. parking garage in the basement.
Bretschger likens working on the building
to dealing with a 1,000-lb. gorilla because of the large scale
of routine tasks. For example, drilling thousands of cores
through the concrete slab to accommodate piping, ductwork,
and other systems must take into account the large capitals
- a decorative element resembling the underside of a mushroom
- on the tops of all the columns.
At the height of construction, the project
should have 600 to 800 workers onsite, McGovern said. One
of the biggest hurdles they must face is a tight time frame
for construction.
"The pace is very fast," he
said. "The client wants the product to market quickly."
Key Players
Owner: Andalex Group, LLC New
York
Construction Manager-General Contractor:
Pavarini McGovern, New York
Architect: Costas Kondylis
and Partners, New York
Structural Engineer: Cantor
Seinuk Group, New York
M-E-P Engineer: Ettinger Engineering
Associates, New York
Design Consultants: Kondylis
Designs, New York; Shen Milson & Wilke, New York; Israel
Berger & Associates, New York; Fisher Marantz Stone,
New York
Plumbing: Pace Plumbing, Brooklyn
Mechanical: PJ Mechanical,
New York; JDP, Astoria, N.Y.
Demolition: Par Wrecking, New
York
Steel Contractor: D.F.S. Brothers
Steel Fabricators, Maspeth, N.Y.
Superstructure Concrete: M&R
European Construction, Woodside, N.Y.
Electric: Forest Electric,
New York
Drywall: Component Assembly
Systems, Pelham, N.Y.
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