Lofty goals

Renovating 100-year-old H.J. Heinz factories and warehouses into luxury loft apartments yields building challenges -- and new living space -- in downtown Pittsburgh.

by Clair D. Urbain

Pittsburgh continues to be considered an icon of the born-again Rust Belt. The rebirth of its industrial yards is remaking the city into a vibrant financial and services center that is attracting new money while recycling old buildings built nearly 100 years ago.

The food-processing giant, the H.J. Heinz Company, has its roots on the banks of the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh. Known around the world, the multi-billion dollar company sells products ranging from its world-famous ketchup to Ore-Ida potatoes.

As the company grew in the early 20th century, it built a variety of buildings at what is now known as the North Shore area of Pittsburgh. The five- to seven-story buildings were built to last the ages and are typical of the German Romanesque architectural style of the city.

Stately and strong, they were built to help the growing food processor meet customer demand. However, they outlived their usefulness as efficient production facilities as they aged into the 21st century.

A new life
Ironically, as the buildings’ usefulness as production facilities waned, demand for downtown housing burgeoned, especially along the picturesque Allegheny River. The Ferchell Group, a developer that has taken other old manufacturing and warehouse facilities into the 21st century as upscale housing, purchased five of the Heinz buildings for renovation.

The buildings, still known by the names of their original use — Shipping, Bean, Meat, Reservoir and Cereal — are being reborn as trendy and unique one-, two- and three-bedroom loft apartments.

Construction for the $70.2 million H. J. Heinz Lofts project began in January 2003, with completion slated by January 2005. Funding comes from a variety of sources, including HUD and the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust.

Four of the five buildings on the four-acre site will be developed into a total of 267 apartments. The Shipping building will be transformed into a parking garage. Enclosed bridges, once used to move product in and out of the manufacturing facilities, will now protect tenants from the weather as they go from building to building. The ground floor of the Reservoir building still houses offices and equipment for Heinz’ parent company, Del Monte.

Renovation challenges
Renovating the structures provides some interesting challenges for architects and contractors, says Bill Jacob, foreman for Miller Electric Construction Inc., which has the contract to help the demolition contractor remove old wiring. Then Miller crews will rewire the complex.

“Removing power from the buildings was difficult. Power would feed from one building to the next. We would turn off a breaker in one building and the lights would go out in an area that was two buildings away. We were constantly concerned with power back-feeding from other circuits,” says Jacob.

“It took us a few months to assure power would be safe. We went from box to box, testing circuits. We painted any conduit or wire that was to stay green; any to be removed were painted orange. Our plan was to remove all power except for one high-voltage line in each building during construction. When the new power was in place, we would then remove the old high-voltage line,” he says. “If the demolition contractor was ever uncertain about the line, he would ask us. Fortunately, we have had no surprises as demolition progressed.”

The demolition process took the buildings down to their shells. Windows that help define the buildings’ architecture were removed, refurbished and replaced.

To create dramatic lighting on the buildings, Jacob’s crews had to strategically place conduit so the uplights that illuminate the buildings’ facades would be correctly positioned. “The walls are 36" thick, so we started drilling from the outside with a special-ordered 42" bit. It would take us an hour and a half to drill one 5/8" hole. We had to watch where the bit would end up because several of the holes had to be angled to miss support beams inside the building,” he adds.

Establishing new distribution lines in the buildings required crews to core-drill 5"-diameter holes through the old foundations. “We had to make 30 power entrances in the buildings using core drills with extensions. All the conduit coming into the building will be encased in concrete and will feed switchgear that will power each building,” Jacob says.

The loft apartment style calls for open spaces and exposed bricks and beams. To create that effect, architects required that electrical and mechanical services be unobtrusive in the apartments. “We used to take ceilings for granted but this job has given us a whole new appreciation for them. These apartments have exposed ceilings in most of the areas and no wiring can run across them. In most of the apartments, only the bathroom has a finished ceiling and that’s where the electrical and mechanicals are run.

“We are running wiring around walls because there is no finished ceiling where we can run conduit. We have some runs that are more than 100' longer than they need to be because there was no ceiling where we could run wire.

“It took extensive pre-planning and coordination with all of the trades to get the utilities in place because all of the mechanicals and electrical service must run through the same space,” he says. “Every building, every floor is different, so it’s hard to establish a work pattern that gets it all finished efficiently.”

In most apartments, the mechanical and electrical service runs under a raised floor that requires one or two steps in the apartments’ main hallways. HVAC systems either tuck into the ceiling above the bathrooms or in a utility closet. Further, all floors get an additional layer of concrete to seal residue and allow for plumbing recesses.

Finding consistency among the variables
“Front-end planning is the key to the success of this job,” says David McKamish, president of McKamish, the project’s mechanical contractor.

“This is a design-build job that required extensive initial budgeting for funding. It took one and one-half years to get the design development complete to secure funding. The design was almost 95 percent completed before funding was established,” he recalls.

“Although this is a retrofit job with many unique challenges, the work is highly repetitive. It is a job with a lot of duplication and that means pennies, seconds and minutes add up. For example, a $100 problem is not just a $100 problem. It is a $100 problem multiplied 267 times, so pennies and nickels quickly add up to dollars. We have instilled this thinking from the design to the installation process,” he says.

“Initial plans called for only 12 distinct apartment configurations, but once all buildings were site-surveyed and design changes made to account for individual building designs, we ended up with 67 configurations,” says McKamish.

“With that many variations, prefabbing is more difficult. We worked hard to figure out the best way to install the mechanicalsin the first building and are proceeding with that plan in the other buildings,” he says.

Work crews were challenged by a layer of tar sandwiched between layers of concrete in the floors of some of the buildings. The floors are from 13" to 18" thick. “It was put there for waterproofing, and once a core drill hits it, it gums up so badly that workers must stop and clean the core. Now, crews look for telltale signs of tar, such as tar residue at the base of columns, then go more slowly and clean out the hole more often while drilling.

“As soon as they encounter tar, they stop and clean out as much as possible or flood the hole with water to keep the tar cool so that it doesn’t melt and gum up the bit. We are making more than 3,000 holes this way,” he says.

Rich Moore, McKamish sheet metal foreman, concurs with McKamish about the challenges of the job.

“This job is different than new construction. We had to field-survey all existing conditions and then build around them. From there, our engineers use CADD to lay out the duct work configuration and then we evaluate our prefab opportunities for the sheet metal work. We are fortunate that our shop is only 10 minutes from the site,” he says.

Moore agrees consistency helps all of the contractors do their jobs more efficiently. “The key is preplanning. We all have to come up with a system and procedure that allows us all to do the job the same way every time. On this job, it took us the first building to get it down right, but on other jobs, we look to get the process in place on the first floor of the first building,” Moore says.

Like the electrical service, ductwork must be installed in a way that adds character to the apartments. “We are using lasers more on this job than any other job we’ve had,” says Moore. “Since there is so much exposed ductwork, we lay it out on the floor then use the laser to shoot up to the ceiling to mark the spots where the hangers must go. This saves a man on the job because we don’t need someone on a ladder with a plumb bob,” he says.

The lasers also aid in transferring pipe locations from floor to floor.

“We took a piece of Plexiglas and drew circles of various diameters on it (see illustration). The circles line up to a cross-hair and in the center, we drilled a 1/4" hole. To transfer the spot to the floor below, we align the Plexiglas template with the proper hole size, then shoot the laser down through the hole to the floor below. There’s only one mark needed, and it eliminates using two measuring tapes and plumb bobs and the worry that there are variations in walls from floor to floor,” he says.

Teamwork for success
McKamish believes the success of this project lies in the spirit of the teamwork that evolved as this job went through design development with the architect, developer and general contractors. “We also had the same people working on the project from front to back, and that continuity helped build a teamwork approach. Putting people on and pulling people off the job throughout this process would not have worked so well,” McKamish concludes.

Published in the July/August 2004 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.

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