CCS
Crafesmae
Commercial Brywall, Inc. Vol. 4 No. 9
July 1983
Marriott Hot®! - M®dicai Center
Mbw lh©foD for m®d]n©al ©eontsir patients In the heart of Houston’s medical center area, a new Marriott Hotel is under construction and CDI is playing a major role in it. CDI work crews recently started construction on the new hotel, the seventh in the chain to be built in Houston. Under the supervision of Bill Shafer, CDI is doing the corework as well as the interior buildout and door frames for general contractor, Gierhart Vaughan/PCL. About seven men are on the job currently laying out the floors and installing the top track. Larry Lutz is ; the lead layout man for CDI on the project. “So far the job is going pretty well,” says Bill. “The job is actually divided into two segments —the tower and then the three lower floors. The tower will be pretty straightforward, however, the lower floors will be a lot of detail and elaborate work.” The Marriott/Medical Center, designed by architects Sikes Jennings Kelly of Houston, will be 26 stories, 421 rooms and will have a ballroom and approximately 10,000 square feet of meeting space. The first three floors will entail a great deal of detail work. Registration, lobby and a gift shop will inhabit the street level while Marriott's offices will be in the basement. “The second floor will be a tough one for us,” says project manager Jim Smith. “The ceilings are very elaborate and it will take a lot of coordination between the trades in all the detail work." The second floor will house a theme restaurant. Its ceiling will be dramatic-high with stairstep drops and several light coves. wj Again, the ceiling on the third floor will be detailed and high over the meeting rooms and the large ballroom. A three-story atrium will
bring natural light into the first three stories and the pool and hydro therapy pool area will be glass covered. The new hotel is located on the corner of Fannin and Dryden Streets, connected to Scurlock Tower. “In many respects, building a hotel is similar to building a condominium project,” says Bill. “There is more plumbing and mechanical to work around in hotels and condos than the typical office building and the
floors are usually more cut up." Further, this type of construction easily becomes congested with other trades so sequencing is very important. “So far the sequencing is quite smooth," adds Bill. CDI’s carpenter foreman on the tower portion is John Ingram who worked with Bill on Four Oaks Place. The projected completion date for the Marriott/Medical Center is June 6, 1984. Mike Holland did the estimating of the project for CDI.