Page 27 - BusinessWest June 27, 2022

Work to convert the property into a mix of residential and retail spaces is expected to be completed in the early fall of 2023.
Photo by Joe Santa Maria, Kill the Ball Media
From the ground floor, Beaumier took Busi- nessWest to the basement, where collected water provided evidence of still-ongoing work to shore up the property, and then to the second floor, where the next use of the property is starting to come into focus.
There, and on the remaining floors, long rows of what used to be hotel rooms —most all of them with doors to the rooms on either side — have been essentially gutted, with the masonry walls that divided them (see photo, page 30) taken down and the groundwork laid for what will become one- and two-bedroom apartments.
In one hallway, rows of shower units were waiting for eventual installation.
While the property will have a completely dif- ferent use than it did a century ago, it will look, in almost all respects, as it did back then, Beaumier explained.
“When we’re done, and we look down this cor- ridor, it’s supposed to look just like it did in 1900,” he told BusinessWest as he gestured down the narrow hallway of the wing of the property that runs north-south toward State Street. “All these doors that went into the individual hotel rooms ... we’ve opened up the spaces, so there will prob-
ably be two dummy doors for each unit; the doors that we took off have to get pinned back
in the wall so that when you look down this cor- ridor, it looks the same as it did historically; every third door will actually open into a unit, the rest will be dummy doors.”
Elaborating, he said that the actual walls to the units were pushed back a foot from where they stood originally, because the original cor- ridor is too narrow for a wheel chair to turn in, an example of how some adjustments have to be
“When we’re done, and we look down this corridor, it’s supposed to look just like it did in 1900.”
made to enable a century-old building to comply with modern building codes and state and fed- eral regulations.
The tour then provided more glimpses into the past as it went to and then down one of the original staircases to what was the lobby area of the former hotel, complete with the remains of a revolving door, marble-covered walls, and a ceil- ing, now in an advanced state of decay, that will be restored.
“Right now, we’re getting the building struc- turally back to where it needs to be so we can do the mechanicals and other systems,” said Fon- taine adding that the initial phases of this project have involved demolition, structural work, and salvaging a number of features. When these have been completed, crews will move onto instal-
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