AC Hotel on West Main

[westsider28]

Concrete was poured for half of the ground floor in the predawn hours yesterday.  Now they've gotten quite a few rebar columns erected and covered with concrete forms (not yet poured).   They're moving pretty quickly.  Here's a webcam screencap and a few photos I took this morning.  The first floor is supposed to be 18 feet tall.  The building already feels larger in real life than I expected.  This thing is gonna be BIG.

[spartanburgh]

Finally, The tower crane is going up today.

[westsider28]

There's still one more piece to go on the arm, but the tower crane looks pretty impressive in the skyline!

[westsider28]

The first half of the 2nd floor was poured this morning. Starting to put up 2nd-floor forms for the stairwells, elevator shafts, and columns too. The 2nd floor is supposed to be 14 feet tall. They also recently put up a second webcam behind the hotel with a wider view (for when it gets taller).

Last week, Hub City Bees posted some awesome drone photos of the site & crane:

[westsider28]

You may have seen the H-J article this morning giving an update on hotel progress.  Not much new info.  They should be pouring the 2nd half of the 3rd floor early tomorrow morning.  They've got about half of the 3rd floor columns poured.  This is the first guestroom floor.  These are the shortest at 10 feet each, so 3 of these floors are approx. equal to the first 2 floors in height.  There will be 7 of these floors.

[westsider28]

The first half of the 4th floor was poured Saturday morning.  Moving right along.

[westsider28]

From this past weekend.  Just about halfway up!

[westsider28]

You can really feel the scale of the hotel from directly across West Main.  When it tops out, it will be imposing/impressive!

[westsider28]

You can see on the webcam that workers are putting up metal framing right now to prepare the first floor for cladding.  They also poured concrete for the first half of the 7th floor this morning.  Moving right along!

There's also now an exterior materials example at the back corner of the site.  It looks fantastic.  I especially like the flower embellishment.

[Sparkleman]

I saw last night in a tweet from one of our city councilmen that extra floors were going to be added to the AC.

Can anyone confirm this?

[vicupstate]

^^ Unless they planned to do so from the foundation pouring, it would seem odd/difficult to add floors now.  

[westsider28]

@Sparkleman Do you have a link to the tweet?  As far as I know, none of our City Council members has a Twitter account.

[spartanburgh]

They likely said something like, three more floors will be added (to what is there now). I don't see

adding floors without foundation and column modifications.

[Historyguy]

I would just interpret it as "they've got three more floors to go" from where they are right now...  

I don't know that anybody on City Council has a Twitter account either.  

[westsider28]

Well, moving on from that episode...

Notice the scaffold (I guess you'd call it) in the first picture.  Looks like cladding will start soon.  The first half of the 8th floor will probably be poured at the end of the week.  They've been consistently pouring a half-floor per week.  Two more guestroom floors of 10 feet each, then the 10th floor bar (15 feet), then the sloped roof.

[westsider28]

I noticed today that the Robins-Morton project display window on the Dunbar side of the Aug W Smith / Belk building (between MPS Architects & Cafe Around the Corner) had a poster showing lobby renderings for the AC Hotel.  There are 3 images showing a bar, the parking lot entrance / check-in desk, and the Main Street entrance / elevators.  There was extreme glare on the window, so I could only get a decent photo of the last image.  Looks very sophisticated.

[westsider28]

I forgot that, according to the plans, the 9th floor will actually be 11 feet tall (not 10), for whatever reason.  The hotel structure is now just over 100 feet tall.  As you can see in the photo below, scaffolding is being erected on the front of the building (ends and part of back already have it).  I wonder when the actual cast-stone cladding will start to go up.

[Spartan]

What's the total height of this building going to be?

[westsider28]

@Spartan 128 feet.

Floor 1: 18 ft, Floor 2: 14 ft, Floors 3-8: 10 ft, Floor 9: 11 ft, Floor 10: 15 ft, sloped roof: 10 ft (basement is 14 ft, but that doesn't count toward height)

[Spartan]

Thanks!

[westsider28]

Groundbreaking for the AC Hotel was 1 year ago today, and now they're working on the final floor!  Here are some pictures I took over the past few weeks showing the hotel's impact from various parts of downtown.

[hub-city]

Is there a plan to bury all the power lines on Daiel Morgan near the hotel and Cribbs?  I can't remember if that was part of the streets aping agreement.

[Spartanburg Guy]

Here's some pictures I took today:

[westsider28]

Looks like concrete for the roof was poured this morning.  I wonder when the official topping-out ceremony will be.  Could be soon, depending on whether they consider this slab to be the top or the (still to come) framing for the sloped tile roof.  Here's a photo from the webcam:

And I noticed that a flatbed load of bricks was delivered to the site on Thursday, so I would think that exterior cladding could begin soon, too.  Exciting!

[westsider28]

Speak of the devil! A topping out ceremony was held today with various dignitaries.  The article also has the lobby renderings I posted about earlier in this thread (but much clearer than my photo-thru-glass, haha).