Bang-up Time at the Waldorf

The Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York City's most famous landmarks, is undergoing exterior restoration. Interior restoration work was completed several years ago.

By Dave Platter

A 20-person construction crew from Graciano Corporation - with their dusty boots, heavy equipment and habit of making loud noises - has stepped into the elegant world of The Waldorf-Astoria, where President Bush stays for an eye-popping $7,000 a night when he's in New York.

The workers are rebuilding sections of parapets, replacing stone lintels, sills and decorative carvings. Brickwork at the corners of the building is being rebuilt, and underlying steel, corroded over time, is being replaced.

The cost for this phase of the project, which will last six or seven months, is $1.5 million.

The 42-story Waldorf is not the Holiday Inn. Rather than closet-sized rooms, there are room-sized closets, and suites as large as 5,400 sq. ft.

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"When VIPs come to the building, there are security concerns," said Tom Corbo, VP/GM of Graciano Corp.'s New York Division. "When the president and vice president come to the building," all the construction crew's operations are made to stop.

"They have periods of time where we're not allowed to make any noise in the building" at all, said Dino Rossi, Graciano's project manager. "When they had the United Nations General Assembly in town, we were basically told to shut down for more than a week."

Access and scheduling have been the biggest headaches for the Graciano team at the Waldorf. The project is basically Local Law 11 work, made more difficult by the Waldorf's landmark status and rarified atmosphere. Obtaining access to setbacks and other work areas almost always means interrupting the legitimate - and exclusive - business of the hotel, and the construction crew must operate on its best behavior. Workers don't even leave footprints behind when they finish each evening.

"We had a designer's full residence within the building and through our access area," said Rossi, who wouldn't answer if the designer was Calvin Klein. "We had to move a lot of riggings right through that apartment."

Corbo added: "There's a lot of protection that has to go in place every time we access a room or a corridor. Some of these are finished spaces," so layers of thin plastic and hardboard are put over carpets, and walls are covered to prevent them from being gouged.

"The budget for this [protection] is higher than on other projects," Corbo said, though he wouldn't reveal by how much.

To minimize the scheduling problems, Graciano developed a calendar system that allowed the hotel to specify dates during which no work would take place.

The solution wasn't always perfect. "We laid out the dates that were available, and then sometimes on the days when we were allowed to make noise, we were working with a dozen men in an area, they would come and tell us we had to stop," Rossi said.

Making the already difficult situation worse was the target completion date of the end of 2003. The team began work in September.

"They imposed a quite demanding schedule on us," Corbo said. "It has to do with their budgetary restrictions. We're complying as humanly possible."

Once access could be arranged, "The most difficult aspect of working here is putting the scaffold in place," Corbo said. "We are using sometimes several different elevators, going through occupied spaces with heavy equipment, rigging off of different floors, different levels. Where we can use pipe scaffolding built from a setback, we install that."

In several areas of the building, the workers have to operate on suspended scaffolds.

The team is replacing pieces of cast concrete. "Those things are massive," Rossi said. "Some of the stones we've taken out up there are around 1,200 lbs." On the setback, his workers can easily handle even the biggest stone.

"But, where you're just working on a hanging scaffold, it's a dangerous application," he added. Rather than risk it, his workers cut the stones into pieces small enough to be safely removed without exposing anybody to heavy weight.

"The other way, we would have to cinch the stone from above and handle it by guys on the scaffold," Rossi said. "But that could be very dangerous, because if that stone drops and hits the scaffold, it could be a catastrophic situation."

The replacement pieces are much easier to handle. "We're actually engineering it to do it in GFRC, which is glass-fiber-reinforced concrete," he added. "It's a shell mounted on a steel frame with about one-fifth the weight."