OWNER & DEVELOPER: Cal Harbor Urban Renewal Associates, a joint venture of Hyatt Development Corp. of Chicago and Mack-Cali Realty Corp. of Cranford, NJ
ARCHITECT & INTERIOR DESIGNER: Brennan Beer Gorman/Monk Interiors, NYC
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: The Cantor Seinuk Group, NYC
MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL & PLUMBING CONTRACTOR: Cosentini Associates, NYC
CONSULTING ENGINEER (Pier Renovation): Sidney M. Johnson & Associates Inc., Clark, NJ
SUPERSTRUCTURE CONCRETE CONTRACTOR: Forsa, Little Ferry, NJ
DRYWALL & ACOUSTICS CEILING CONTRACTOR: Interstate Drywall Corp., Clifton, NJ
HVAC & PLUMBING CONTRACTOR: F&G Mechanical, Secaucus, NJ
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR: Mehl Electric, Pearl River, NY
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: AMEC, NYC

Building. Building. Building on the river.

These words are not a variation on a famous song. Instead, they describe how the $51 million Hyatt Jersey City hotel is being constructed - on the Hudson River.

Building on the Hudson, or more precisely, a pier that extended into the river, required that the existing pier be repaired and also made capable of supporting the loads of the hotel. It also required that barges be used in the river to enable the hotel to be constructed.

However, before actual construction could begin, the existing pier had to be repaired and made capable of supporting the loads of the hotel. If the pier were not renovated, the hotel could not be built.

The first task was to design a substructure for the pier. "This consisted of piles and a concrete deck, some of which was the old pier deck that was salvaged, and some of it was new.

Preserving the existing pier construction meant battling marine borers that ate and continued to eat the timber piles. To prevent the marine borers from eating the remainder of the timber piles, vinyl sheeting was used along with lightweight concrete.

The purpose of the lightweight (foam) concrete was to reduce the amount of the added load to the piles. Reinforcement of the existing foundation walls required the installation of new reinforcing bars bonded to the existing concrete using shotcrete. Compatibility of the existing piles and the new steel piles was accomplished by adjusting the loads on the piles so that the strains were compatible.

The existing concrete and timber-pile pier on the inland side wherever it could carry the load and drove additional high-capacity, 100-ton steel piles on the water side. On the west side, the existing pier was retrofitted by repairing and reinforcing the concrete. Then a precast concrete plank platform was created.

From there, post-tensioned concrete slabs were used for the floors because any other system would not hold the dead weight of the structure until the concrete hardened. As a result, the floors are about 8-in.-thick, post-tensioned, 5,000-psi concrete spanning 27 ft. on the east-west direction and 21-ft. on the north-south direction.

Eighty percent of the hotel is on the Hudson River, which was accomplished using the existing pier and reinforcing it.

The pier extends 850 ft. into the river. The hotel itself is a 10-story, 650-ft.-long linear hotel with 285,000 sq. ft., of space and 350-rooms.

The entrance to the site is a 50-ft.-long driveway that ends and you have to jump to the pier. The pier's width is narrow. It is not large enough to productively drive a vehicle around it. As a result, there was no place for a crane. The solution was to put the crane on a barge. A second barge was used to stage concrete operations.

Building on the river also made for some interesting opportunities. One of them is a third-floor, 1.5-story sky lobby. Another design challenge was building on a pier, which meant there would be no basement. As a result, all of the mechanical systems had to be located in upper floors and in the part of the building that would be on land for ready access to generators and transformers. The main mechanical room is a two-story, ground-floor space. The cooling towers are on the roof.

Getting utilities to the building was also a challenge. Utilities were run underneath the pier and enclosed in a precast concrete utility trench that runs the length of the pier under the center of the building.

The jury said this was "a difficult job that required reconstruction of a pier. It also had limited site access providing a unique solution of performing many construction functions from barges in the river."