Chicago – Page 21 – Building The Godfrey

Drill Baby Drill

The end of the week, Friday, we meet again and that means we walk the hotel construction site for #sitevisitfriday. I wanted to take you back in the construction phase and explain a big factor in our build. As you know the original construction of the building was years and years ago, we decided to make upgrades to the building to meet the needs of the hotel. Step one to start those upgrades was to level every floor by pouring a new concrete floor. Step two to this phase was then to core every floor for plumbing, electrical, etc… which is what we saw taking place today. This process has been completed on lower floors and they are now moving up floor by floor.

Before and After Of Concrete Pouring

This process was very labor intensive and took some time to complete. You probably saw truck after truck coming to the construction site for a few weeks earlier this year.

The team then took the concrete wheel borrow by wheel borrow up to each floor as a team poured it and leveled each floor.

After each floor dried and settled over a period of time the coring began for all the piping to be placed in the hotel. These are heavy powerful drills with incredible drill bits to cut these holes in the concrete. The drill bits for coring ranged in size from 6 inches to over 1 foot.

Here is the result from the drilling, these are called the cores.

The end result with plumbing installed.

Now to do this for each of our 221 guest rooms in the hotel, so now it is time to drill baby drill.

The Exterior. Up She Goes.

Well it is Friday and we wanted to show you the exterior. Cold, wind, snow, rain, it doesn’t stop LendLease our construction company from moving forward. When we had some beautiful sun the past couple days before this last snow storm, the new exterior skin was being applied to the building. This is a very difficult project as the entire outside is placed on the building like a puzzle. We are excited to see it go up over the next several weeks and give the building that distinct architectural look it was meant to have.

The entire process of building a hotel and brand is sectioned out into phases. Each phase has its scope of work and what is to be completed and when. It may seem like you are jumping around but in the big picture these phases are all related to each other and have to be completed in order.

Marketing Branding Meeting

Today we had a campaign marketing meeting with our great advertising and marketing team. The timeline for developing a brand, tag lines and design come months and months in advance of the hotel opening. An important aspect of the marketing and branding is that it matches the feel of the guest experience and the hotel design internally. Creating a brand that is layered across all aspects and flows well together is key to keeping your brand on the guests minds.

We discussed many topics today from our marketing ad campaign coming up to simple key packet designs for the front desk. The designs and ads we have in development are awesome and I cannot wait to show you, but not yet. Stay tuned to see them released later this year.

Soap Soap Soap

It was a fun day in the office when not one but several packages arrived and we were blessed with soap. Not just any soap but great high end product that we now have to test. We need to determine what bath products the Godfrey will utilize in our guest rooms. This will take a lot of hand washing and smelling.

So what do you look for in a bath product for a hotel? To the guest the smell is very important, not to masculine and not to feminine and definitely not perfumey. It has to have a nice balance fragrance to it and sometimes preferably naturally. Other aspects from a hotel operations stand point that can be overlooked are a cap seal and a bottle that is clear.

What Is #SiteVisitFriday

The Godfrey Hotel team walks the construction site every week to keep an eye on the progress and to see what has been going on. Every week when we walk the floor we discuss the layout and the vision of what the hotel will look like.

In the photo George Jordan our Area General Manager and Jermaine Anderson our Hotel Manager stand the 4th floor Rooftop talking about the layout and scenery of the skyline. We cannot wait for you to see what we have in store for this space.