comment
The Hotel Parq Central in downtown Albuquerque will be open in time for this year’s balloon festival.
...district, permitted infill of the basement where the boiler was housed. A laundry and guest workout area will take its place on the new first floor of the old building. Three guest suites will occupy the second floor.
Similar compromises will take place in the 37,900-sq-ft, three-story main building and its added penthouse bar. The building’s 1-ft-thick concrete walls, formed with hefty round uncrushed aggregate sometimes 1.5 to 2 in. in diameter, are in good shape, as is the external stucco, says Pete Jacobson, Klinger’s jobsite supervisor.
The flooring on upper layers was done the old-fashioned way on greased, 2- by 8-in. planks dropped out as their cement load hardened.
A Daikin air-conditioning system provides individual cooling for each room, eliminating much of the need for ducting, says Klinger project manager Joe Reed. Double-pane windows will be fitted into existing sashes if their conditions allow.
An ambulance carport at the rear of the main building will be enclosed by glass walls and made into a conservatory with plants, sofas and decorations that fit the history of the building, says designer Heather Van Luchene of Santa Fe’s HVL Interiors.
A forest of irregularly placed concrete columns spread throughout the main floor as support elements for the building’s upper stories will become positive elements in the redesign, Van Luchene says. The space will include a library, fireplace area and café, and there will be a rooftop bar with a view of the Albuquerque skyline and the Sandias.
The 8-ft-wide hospital corridors on the upper levels will be kept, though additions at each end of the main building reduce the corridors to the 5 ft more typical of today’s hotels. Suite bathrooms occasionally jut out 1.5 ft on each side of the corridor, disguised as the hospital cabinets that once occupied that space.
Key Players:
Owner: Memorial Ventures LLC
Architect: Studio Southwest Architects Inc.
General Contractor: Klinger Constructors
Engineers: High Mesa Consulting Group; Walla Engineering Ltd.; ArSed Engineering Group
Interior Design: HVL Interiors
Subcontractors: Rodgers Plumbing & Heating; Pelletier Construction; Standard Automatic Fire Enterprises; Installation Service Heating & Cooling; Service Electric Co.
Sign in to Comment
To write a comment about this story, please sign in. If this is your first time commenting on this site, you will be required to fill out a brief registration form. Your public username will be the beginning of the email address that you enter into the form (everything before the @ symbol). Other than that, none of the information that you enter will be publically displayed.