Welcome Lime Wire! This blog will serve to bring everyone up to date on the build-out process occurring at our new home, 45 Howard. As you know, we are many months into renovating and upgrading our new home, but here is a quick punch list of events to bring everyone up to speed. If you are curious for more details please email me or leave a comment. From this date forward, regular video, pictures and updates from the field will show up on this blog!
1) We signed our lease in March of 2008 to take on 45 Howard. It is a SoHo Cast Iron building crafted in the Venetian Renaissance style. It was designed by Thomas R. Jackson in 1870 as a warehouse for A.J.Dittenhofer, a dry goods establishment. Exciting stuff - I know. Check out this Times article for information on more Cast Iron beauties in the SoHo area: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEEDE1039F931A15757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
2) John and Connie Torborg are the architects working on Mark Gorton's new home on the UWS. They were brought on early in the process for 45 Howard and have been hard at work ever since! You most likely have seen them here at 377 on Wednesdays for our weekly meetings.
3) In April we brought Alcon Builders Group, the awesome Construction Management team on board to help us take this building out of disrepair and into awesomeness. For more information on Alcon, check out: http://alconbuildersgroup.com/
4) There are two governing bodies that our team interfaces with to get the building renovated, Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Department of Buildings. 45 Howard is classified as a Landmark building, so any alterations must first be approved here before heading off to the DOB. And well, the DOB, after last year's building related tragedies is far more exacting within the reviewing process... it's been a learning process!
5) The first thing we did at 45 Howard was to pull an old DEMO permit and begin taking up the bad flooring and old partitions left from the previous tenant. Later, I worked to afford Wire an amendment in our lease to include the old super's room on Howard as our new ground floor lobby; this is currently being 'demo-d'.
6) In June we submitted an Alt 2 application to Landmarks to be reviewed before heading on to the DOB. This application allows for new construction to begin within a defined scope on floors 3-5. Once this was approved at both LPC and the DOB, we were issued a work permit and began leveling the floors and laying plywood. A lot of the joists and sister beams had to be replaced from earlier water and fire damage.
7) The subfloor was salvaged and brought down in piles to the 2nd floor. A local millworker looked over the wood and amazingly, beneath years and years of grime lives beautiful heart pine wood. The millworker, Steven Iino, will salvage as much of this wood as possible in his shop. It has been determined that our kitchen cabinetry will be made out of the old subfloor of the building! RECLAIM baby. Iino will also be responsible for crafting the workstations in the open area of each floor. These stations will appear to be one long desk – with milled tops, metal brackets beneath, cast legs and custom RADICAL task lights. These desks will be utterly functional, but very handsome.
8) Other professionals were brought on board to assist in the project, including Francesco Mo, our structural engineer. As we plan to reinstall the stairs, determine the weight bearing load of the floors and plan for our rooftop, Mo has been the guiding force in determining how these elements will be safely built.
9) Meanwhile Connie Torborg, one of the architects and I have been defining the look of the interior space, from barrel ceilings and archways to door shapes and hardware. The layouts of the workstations, kitchen pantries, trash rooms, bathrooms, conference rooms, lounges (did someone say lounges), trash rooms, the company dining area/event space, the bike room, HVAC rooms, ‘classic Lime telephone rooms’ and data rooms have been defined – and a ton of other ‘rooms’ too – just ask!
10) The Alt 1 application, which is the ‘Big Kahuna’ application, including Mechanical, Structural, and Architectural drawings has gone through the LPC and is now in the DOB. We are days away from a go ahead.
11) The façade painting application has gone into LPC, and we are waiting on our mainly white building with green accents to be approved. This design was a Mark Gorton effort. The scaffolding you currently see wrapped around the building will go into ‘paint’ use in the next two weeks.
12) Meetings with Plant specialists have also begun to make sure that our indoor ‘tropical plants’ are happy, as well as our Zone 6 NYC rooftop plants. It’s going to be green over in our new home! Most of the plants will find their home by the windows and will be professionally maintained (yeehaw – no more dead-lifting tree carcasses!)
13) The interior look of the building as you may know was at its inception deemed ‘Caribbean’. I have taken that seed idea and developed an interior layout that reads as a hot climate, with horizontal pivot windows, bronze light fixtures, plantation shutters, arched fan details, hard wood floors in a herringbone pattern, giant photographs of the ocean, etc. etc. - a general beach bungalow aesthetic. Also, in effort to avoid rattan furniture and starfish side-pillows – I thought I’d bring Lime Wire’s coolness to this building with a mid-century take on the furniture: think MAD MEN in Cuba, you dig (http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/). There will be Danish 50’s style furniture to marry nicely with our Island theme. In fact I have been talking shop with some of the same vendors that work for MAD MEN! Each floor has a lounge, which will be a one stop shop for relaxing, talking, making a phone call, or taking a break. Not to mention an awesome place to show your friends and family. Feel free to ask me about any of this; I hope to have images of purchased items up on this blog shortly.
14) I have been in talks with Diebold for our security needs over at 45 Howard and most likely everyone can expect a key card experience. The difference at our new building will be a key card pass in the elevator which dictates what floors you can stop at, controlling access. Of course employees will most likely have access to all floors, this just means we don’t have to have a gate at the entrance of each floor (the gate is the key card access point in the elevator). It will be so nice to just step of the elevator and enter a floor seamlessly. Guests will be issued cards and should they fail to return them, they will be deactivated.
15) I could go on and on, but I won’t… yet. Next post!
1) We signed our lease in March of 2008 to take on 45 Howard. It is a SoHo Cast Iron building crafted in the Venetian Renaissance style. It was designed by Thomas R. Jackson in 1870 as a warehouse for A.J.Dittenhofer, a dry goods establishment. Exciting stuff - I know. Check out this Times article for information on more Cast Iron beauties in the SoHo area: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEEDE1039F931A15757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
2) John and Connie Torborg are the architects working on Mark Gorton's new home on the UWS. They were brought on early in the process for 45 Howard and have been hard at work ever since! You most likely have seen them here at 377 on Wednesdays for our weekly meetings.
3) In April we brought Alcon Builders Group, the awesome Construction Management team on board to help us take this building out of disrepair and into awesomeness. For more information on Alcon, check out: http://alconbuildersgroup.com/
4) There are two governing bodies that our team interfaces with to get the building renovated, Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Department of Buildings. 45 Howard is classified as a Landmark building, so any alterations must first be approved here before heading off to the DOB. And well, the DOB, after last year's building related tragedies is far more exacting within the reviewing process... it's been a learning process!
5) The first thing we did at 45 Howard was to pull an old DEMO permit and begin taking up the bad flooring and old partitions left from the previous tenant. Later, I worked to afford Wire an amendment in our lease to include the old super's room on Howard as our new ground floor lobby; this is currently being 'demo-d'.
6) In June we submitted an Alt 2 application to Landmarks to be reviewed before heading on to the DOB. This application allows for new construction to begin within a defined scope on floors 3-5. Once this was approved at both LPC and the DOB, we were issued a work permit and began leveling the floors and laying plywood. A lot of the joists and sister beams had to be replaced from earlier water and fire damage.
7) The subfloor was salvaged and brought down in piles to the 2nd floor. A local millworker looked over the wood and amazingly, beneath years and years of grime lives beautiful heart pine wood. The millworker, Steven Iino, will salvage as much of this wood as possible in his shop. It has been determined that our kitchen cabinetry will be made out of the old subfloor of the building! RECLAIM baby. Iino will also be responsible for crafting the workstations in the open area of each floor. These stations will appear to be one long desk – with milled tops, metal brackets beneath, cast legs and custom RADICAL task lights. These desks will be utterly functional, but very handsome.
8) Other professionals were brought on board to assist in the project, including Francesco Mo, our structural engineer. As we plan to reinstall the stairs, determine the weight bearing load of the floors and plan for our rooftop, Mo has been the guiding force in determining how these elements will be safely built.
9) Meanwhile Connie Torborg, one of the architects and I have been defining the look of the interior space, from barrel ceilings and archways to door shapes and hardware. The layouts of the workstations, kitchen pantries, trash rooms, bathrooms, conference rooms, lounges (did someone say lounges), trash rooms, the company dining area/event space, the bike room, HVAC rooms, ‘classic Lime telephone rooms’ and data rooms have been defined – and a ton of other ‘rooms’ too – just ask!
10) The Alt 1 application, which is the ‘Big Kahuna’ application, including Mechanical, Structural, and Architectural drawings has gone through the LPC and is now in the DOB. We are days away from a go ahead.
11) The façade painting application has gone into LPC, and we are waiting on our mainly white building with green accents to be approved. This design was a Mark Gorton effort. The scaffolding you currently see wrapped around the building will go into ‘paint’ use in the next two weeks.
12) Meetings with Plant specialists have also begun to make sure that our indoor ‘tropical plants’ are happy, as well as our Zone 6 NYC rooftop plants. It’s going to be green over in our new home! Most of the plants will find their home by the windows and will be professionally maintained (yeehaw – no more dead-lifting tree carcasses!)
13) The interior look of the building as you may know was at its inception deemed ‘Caribbean’. I have taken that seed idea and developed an interior layout that reads as a hot climate, with horizontal pivot windows, bronze light fixtures, plantation shutters, arched fan details, hard wood floors in a herringbone pattern, giant photographs of the ocean, etc. etc. - a general beach bungalow aesthetic. Also, in effort to avoid rattan furniture and starfish side-pillows – I thought I’d bring Lime Wire’s coolness to this building with a mid-century take on the furniture: think MAD MEN in Cuba, you dig (http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/). There will be Danish 50’s style furniture to marry nicely with our Island theme. In fact I have been talking shop with some of the same vendors that work for MAD MEN! Each floor has a lounge, which will be a one stop shop for relaxing, talking, making a phone call, or taking a break. Not to mention an awesome place to show your friends and family. Feel free to ask me about any of this; I hope to have images of purchased items up on this blog shortly.
14) I have been in talks with Diebold for our security needs over at 45 Howard and most likely everyone can expect a key card experience. The difference at our new building will be a key card pass in the elevator which dictates what floors you can stop at, controlling access. Of course employees will most likely have access to all floors, this just means we don’t have to have a gate at the entrance of each floor (the gate is the key card access point in the elevator). It will be so nice to just step of the elevator and enter a floor seamlessly. Guests will be issued cards and should they fail to return them, they will be deactivated.
15) I could go on and on, but I won’t… yet. Next post!
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