DEL.ICIO.USMost of downtown’s tornado-damaged windows patched up
Westin’s window replacement likely to have to wait until next year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, October 10, 2008
Seven months after a tornado roared through downtown Atlanta, boarded up and broken windows at some of the city’s most famed high-rises are nearly a thing of the past.
On Friday, crews were installing new windows at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center. Overlooking Centennial Olympic Park, the hotel suffered major damage when the March 14 twister cut a swath of destruction through downtown Atlanta and Cabbagetown, killing one person. Crews were still picking up debris more than a week after the storm.
Johnny Crawford / jcrawford@ajc.com
Window installer Sinai Del Angel Gomez removes a window seal before replacing a cracked window in the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta.
Crews hope to be finished with window replacement by the end of the year.
What’s taking so long?
“There is a lot of demand and a limited supply,” David Wardell, a vice president at Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District. The organizations work to attract tourists and business to downtown Atlanta.
What’s more, Omni officials had to order more than 5,000 pieces of glass, and it took time to find a supplier and contractors to do the work, said hotel spokesman Michael Sullivan. Weather also has been a factor.
Repairs are covered by insurance. Omni officials would not provide a cost estimate of the repairs, or say how much money the hotel lost because some rooms could not be rented.
About 300 of the hotel’s 1,070 rooms were damaged. For seven months, jagged tape covered huge cracks in the glass structure of the newer north tower, built in 2003. It was far more obvious than in the concrete-heavy south tower, built in 1975.
The hotel was one of several tall buildings near Centennial Olympic Park that had been without a substantial number of windows all summer. Georgia-Pacific Center, SunTrust Plaza, the Equitable Building and Centennial Tower recently replaced their windows.
At Georgia-Pacific’s two towers overlooking Woodruff Park, the storm — and falling debris from the Peachtree Plaza — damaged about 25 percent of the windows, said spokesman James Malone. That work was completed in late August, but crews continue inspecting for cracks and other damage, he said.
That leaves the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel as the tallest and most visible with remaining signs of the storm.
The 73-story hotel in the 200 block of Peachtree Street has 81 boarded up windows, and they likely will be that way until sometime next year, said Peachtree Plaza general manager Ed Walls.
The problem: the quarter-inch-thick windows that create the cylindrical building’s signature design are no longer manufactured. Even if they were, Walls said it would be extremely difficult to match them to existing windows, which have “30 years of sun bleach,” he said. Further complicating matters are newer code requirements that call for new, thicker insulated glass.
All this means the hotel may have to replace all of its windows, which could take a year or more. Walls said the hotel has hired an architect and plans to commission a general contractor by November. Working with the hotel’s insurance company, the contractor and architect will try to figure out a way to replace only the damaged windows. If they can’t, they’ll start from scratch.
“It’s more complicated than just replacing your kitchen windows,” said Walls.
Inside the hotel, many damaged rooms have been renovated — new paint, new carpet — and temporary walls constructed where the windows blew out. Most rooms have four windows. If three or more were damaged, the rooms are out of service, Walls said.
While it may look wounded from the outside, Walls wants it known that the Peachtree Plaza still is “open and doing well.”
