A New (Concrete) Star in Theater District
Innovative Layout Raises Structural Challenges
by Dan Friedman

The building of The Biltmore, a new 53-story residential tower at the southeast corner of Eight Avenue and 47th Street, resembled a tango.

Like the famous dance from Argentina, the construction process was complex, characterized by sudden shifts in direction-and, at times, tense. In the end, the "dancers" agree, it was also a beautiful process that has resulted in a beautiful building.

The primary "dancers" in the development of 271 W. 47th St., were James Davidson, a partner with SLCE Architects; and Silvian Marcus, vice president at The Cantor Seinuk Group Inc., the project's structural engineer. The dance began in August 2001.

"The most exciting thing about it was keeping up with the changes to the layouts that the client was making. Because of marketing concerns, the layouts of the apartments were changed, I believe, five times," said Marcus. "We had to juggle the columns around to support each layout."

"The columns were massaged to maximize the usability of the floor plan," agreed Davidson. "The result is a very interesting mix of apartment layouts with an unusual amount of variety and with tremendous views."
The building, which cost approximately $134 million, is owned by The Jack Parker Corp. and The Moinian Group. It began leasing in March and contains 63 two-bedroom units, 237 one-bedroom units, and 164 studios. The studios come in three different layouts.

"As the apartment distribution changed, it sometimes resulted in a column falling in the middle of someone's living room. So we had to transfer the weight of the columns from one location to another," continued Marcus. "Traditionally that's done with a transfer beam, but a beam takes up space and destroys the aesthetics of the apartment. What we did instead, was walk the columns, creating a piece of the wall to overlap with the location of the new column position. There was no pattern to it; we did whatever the apartment layout necessitated. It didn't slow things down."

Dancing to the Music
The general superintendent saw things a little differently. "It slowed things down in the beginning," recalled Peter Hardecker, who oversaw the project for Biltmore Construction LLC, which is owned by The Jack Parker Corp. and which functioned as the general contractor for the project.

"When the footprint of a floor changes, it impacts on structural issues for the next three floors. So columns had to be gradually moved over. … Most of the changes were finalized by the time we reached the eighth floor, and after that we were in a two-day cycle. We maintained that schedule for the next 40 floors. It was a hell of a pace."

"It was a pain in the neck, actually," said Jim Costigan, construction supervisor for Cosner Construction Corp., the concrete contractor on the job. "The way Cantor handled the shifting weight was different than we were used to. When the columns walked, they made a wall because they didn't want the column to appear on the next floor. It involved a lot of extra concrete and a lot of extra work."

Another challenge for Cosner's crew was the stairwells. "They located the stairs in one area from basement to roof," Costigan said. "But the floor-to-floor heights varied from the lower to high floors. I guess they didn't figure that in the beginning and there was a headroom problem. That was a nightmare; the changes we had to make in the stairs were substantial."

The other big part of the job, from the concrete contractor's perspective, was the building's north wall, which is sheer concrete 45-ft. long, 15-in. wide, with window cut-outs. It has no brick façade because the architect wanted to save the space that would have been taken by the brick.

It is water proofed with paint that matches the brick. To pour it, a steel gang form was used instead of the usual plywood form. It was brought up by crane.

"Setting up the steel gang was new to us," said Costigan. "The hard part was setting it up right. Once it was in place and the guys got used to it, it went pretty smoothly."

Other Fancy Moves
The slenderness of the construction site and its location at a busy intersection in the theater district, on the same block with the new Morgan Stanley Building, and immediately adjacent to the historic Biltmore Theater (hence the new building's name), meant some problems for the project supervisors.

The site was only 100 ft. by 140 ft., said said Bill Wallerstein, vice president of construction with The Jack Parker Corp. "The crane and the hoist were set up within the footprint of the of building. We created a loading dock on the first floor and all deliveries were done off-street."

Hardecker added: "Looking at how busy the area was, we placed the crane in a spot that allowed the crane operators to have a full view of both 47th Street and of Eighth Avenue throughout the duration of the project. They were never at a point where they were blind. They had radio communication to be sure, but they also could actually see at all times."

Hardecker and Wallerstein also met early and often with the New York City Department of Transportation, which allowed them to take out two lanes of traffic on Eighth Avenue during the day. "We actually shifted traffic at Eight Avenue," Hardecker said. "This provided our operation with two lanes and still allowed Eight to have five lanes for uptown traffic.

"Without that we would have really struggled with all the concrete trucks. With one unloading, one washing, and one mixing, you really need room."

The tall, thin building also brought water distribution challenges for IM Robbins CE, which handled the mechanical engineering.

"We had to zone the water distribution in the building to extend certain pressures," said Irving Robbins, president of IM Robbins. "We have a roof tank along with both manual and automatic fire pumps in the basement,"

Robbins also installed a complete water filtering system in the building.

"It's a big cost item," Robbins said. "In the past, most developers haven't put it in. But during last year's drought some water we were getting in the city had a brown color. It wasn't unsafe to drink, but people were scared of it. So to avoid future problems like that and to give the tenants the best possible water, we installed a filter."

Another thing the tenants get is great views. The first three floors of the 445,000-sq.-ft. building are retail and commercial space. By the time you get to the first residential floor, every apartment has open views and from the tenth floor up there are Hudson River views, often seen through floor-to-ceiling windows. The views are made possible by the angled and facetted façade of the building.

"What was most interesting about this project was being able to break out of a rectangular grid," said architect Davidson. "The angled component of the building recalls Broadway as it courses through this part of Manhattan.

"We wanted the building to be associated, visually, with the vibrancy of the theater district. The angled shape does that, and, at the same time, provides very dramatic views."

As dramatic, perhaps, as the process through which the views came into being.