Sorry, I meant the start of the steel erection was pushed back to October 12, 2009 instead of October 5, 2009 (not October 15, 2009 as I said in the post). I guess I should not do a post so late at night. Terry

Update on Construction

Hello everyone,
The weather has not been good to us. The rain has slowed down our subcontractor who is putting the footings, piers and foundation walls in. The footings, piers and foundation walls are concrete reinforced with steel that is basically placed in holes in the ground. When it rains the holes get filled with water and the soil turns to mud. It has caused the steel erection to be pushed back a week to October 12, 2009 instead of October 15,2009. Hope everyone is doing well. Terry

Constuction

Hello everyone,
We started construction on Tuesday, September 15,2009(exactly 10 months after the fire). The first step is to pour "footings" which are the concrete pads which will support the steel reinforced concrete piers (all underground)that support the steel columns which will be what you see above ground. They will be pouring concrete all September to create these underground support structures.We are hoping the steel erection starts by the end of the month. It should take about three weeks to erect all the steel. We are looking at a tentative reopening date of April 1st for the entire facility. We hope to reopen Perkins/Legends before that but are still waiting on some information from the engineering firm before we can firm up that date more. I will post shorter more frequent updates now that something is actually happening. Best wishes to everyone. Terry

Permit Issuance

Hello Everyone, I finally have something to post. We received a permit yesterday. Here is an update.
PERMIT ISSUANCE:
Our plans from the Jeffords Engineering were submitted on June 19, 2009. McKenna Associates, our architect, submitted his plans a week later on June 26, 2009. Tuesday July 28,2009, Bova Engineering, the engineering firm hired by the Town of Plattsburgh to review our professionals' plans, responded to the plan submission in a letter to the Town Building Inspector requesting additional information. On August 11 and August 12, our Engineering and Architectural firms resubmitted their plans incorporating the items requested by Bova Engineering. On September 3rd at 12:32 pm I was informed by the Building Inspector, Steve Imhoff, that we were going to receive our building permit upon his receipt of one more signed stamped copy of Plans from both our Architect and Engineer. The architect and engineer from Jeffords Steel were out of the office on Thursday so we submitted the plans from both on Friday and received our Building Permit. We are now awaiting word from our foundation subcontractor and our steel erection subcontractor when they can plug us into their schedules. I will post another blog as soon as we get the scheduling from these sub contractors.
INSURANCE:
We have received our insurance money for the building part of our claim and are still awaiting determination of the amount to be approved on the Personal property Claim and when they will pay the Business Interruption Claim.
TIMELINE:
As soon as we work out the construction schedule in the next couple weeks I will give you a tentative construction schedule. I hope everyone is doing well. Terry

Permit Issuance

Hi Everyone. Here is the status on the different topics I have been reporting to you on.
INSURANCE:
We still do not know the amount the insurance company is going to pay us. The insurance company and I both hired independent adjusters to settle this claim. Our adjusters had their estimates done in March, 2009. The insurance company’s adjuster just filed his report with the insurance company within the last 10 days. It is now up to the insurance company’s executives to approve the amount. We do not know when that will occur. However, they have paid us enough money to start construction.
BUILDING PERMIT:
I have been informed by Jeffords Steel, who is doing the foundation and steel aspect of the plans, that they are ready to submit for a permit on Monday, June 22, 2009. John McKenna, our architect, who is preparing all the architectural design and building code compliance design, is also ready to submit his plans on Monday, June 22, 2009. Once they submit, the plans will go to an engineering firm out of Glenville, NY who will do the code compliance review. We wish this could be done locally but unfortunately it is not. We are not sure how long this review will take and if he will find some items that need to be revised. We hope this does not occur. We are hoping the review process takes no more than two weeks. Jeffords would then schedule their steel erection contractor to erect the steel. We are hoping for that steel erection work will commence the week of July 13, 2009. The steel erection would take approximately 3 weeks to complete. We are intending to hire a lot of subcontractors in order to move the construction along more quickly.
BALANCE OF THE BUILDING PLANS:
We have other professionals designing the fire alarm, electrical, HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) and sprinkler system (every part of the building will be sprinklered). McKenna is doing the plumbing. These plans needed to wait until the architectural design (floor plans, etc.) were done. We hope to have these completed well before the steel structure is completed so they can be submitted for review by the Town hired engineer. This would allow for a continuous construction process.
CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCING:
The delays we have experienced are changing our priorities to get various phases of our operation back up. Our business interruption insurance (covers continuing expenses like mortgage payment, insurance, real estate taxes, administrative payroll etc.) is now definitely going to run out before we get completely back open. This is putting much greater emphasis on getting certain businesses, like Perkins, back open as soon as possible. Then part of the continuing expenses gets covered by that business because it is back open. We are shooting for an October opening for Perkins. We would try to reopen Legends as soon as possible after Perkins along with the Grand Ballroom. We would try to open the health club and the hotel at the same time rather than open the hotel first. This is because it would now be December and there is not much hotel business at that time but it is a great season for the health club business with people joining health clubs due to New Year’s resolutions.
CLOSING:
I hope everyone is well. I assure you we are doing everything possible to commence rebuilding. If we can help with anything, please let us know.
Best wishes, Terry

Update

Hi Everyone,
I never imagined in my worst nightmare that we would be this long without having started reconstruction of the Comfort Inn Complex. I am not going to belabor this negative aspect of this situation.
BUILDING PERMIT
The only thing we are waiting for to start construction is the plans from our architect. He has promised to supply us with them today. Jeffords Steel has the plans completed for the steel frame and for the foundation. All of what has been torn down will be replaced with a steel structure. Our intention is to submit the Jeffords Steel plans and our architects plans to the Town of Plattsburgh Building Inspector's Office on Monday, June 1st. They will forward the plans to an engineering firm out of Glenville, NY who they have hired to review the plans. We are hopeful that he can review the plans in a week. We are also hopeful that the plans do not get kicked back for revisions. Then Jeffords would schedule their subcontractor to erect the steel. He has projected a little over two weeks to erect the steel. All things proceeding without a hitch, we would have the steel frame erected by the end of June.
Balance of the Plans
While the above mentioned process is occurring, the architects plans will be distributed to the professionals who design the electrical, plumbing, HVAC (heating, venting and air conditioning, fire alarm and sprinkler systems. Hopefully they get their plans done before we finish erecting the steel so we can get our second phase building permit which would carry us through to completion of the project. This will enable us to finally get an estimate of the cost to rebuild the structures.
Insurance
We have not received final settlement on the insurance proceeds. The insurance company is delaying paying us for reasons unknown to us. However, we have received enough money to start construction.
Timetable
I wish I could provide better information here. From when we start construction, we think we need 4 1/2 to 5 months to get the everything back open (with the possible exception of the health club which may be later)-so end of October/early November. Perkins and the banquet business should be sooner but the town is requiring more scientific testing on the existing structure before we can build, even put a roof back on. Without a roof, the weather is causing more and more damage to these buildings making the scope of work increase and therefore a longer time to complete the work. Once our engineers can provide the testing and they approve the testing, we can set a timetable to do that work.
Best wishes to you
I know this has negatively impacted your lives and I am truly sorry for that. It certainly has negatively impacted mine too. I am working as hard as I can to get our property back up as soon as possible and better than ever.

Hi Everyone,
This experience is truly a roller coaster ride but one that you take in the dark because you don't know what is around every corner.
On the insurance level, our adjuster reached tentative agreement with Philadelphia's lead adjuster on the building insurance claim on April 27, 2009. The personal property claim is also close to being resolved. Hopefully that means we will be paid on the building claim in the near future. We have received a partial payment which allows us to staart construction as soon as we receive the building permit.
On the building permit level, our design team had to make significant changes in the floor planning because an incorrect elevation was used on the plans in the ballroom. This required a significant change in the plans where existing Hotel Building 1 and the Ballroom building (both 1st and 2nd floors at different elevations to each other) connect to the 1st and second floor of the new building (lobby/pool/health club/meeting rooms building) which has the second floor at different elevations to those two buildings mentioned above and the first floor elevation the same as hotel building 1 but different elevation to to the Ballroom and meeting building. There were also problems at the connection point of the new structure to Legends/party room/Ballroom/family entertainment center. When the architect changes his plans, then the steel company has to change their plans. It really is a domino effect.
Yes by this time you are saying to yourself why did Terry even try to explain this. The answer is to give a little flavor of how complicated this plan is and what these problems do to the timetable. I skipped the really detailed part which I will give anyone in person if you want to get bored by detail. As of today, the floor planning of the building is complete which is a major step forward. However, these changes knocked us out of our slot with Jeffords Steel to have the steel manufactured on May 11 and delivered on May 18 with erection starting May 25th. I am awaiting word on how the schedule will be adjusted. We now have to have the changes finalized by the design team and submit our plans for a building permit review process. This plan will not be reviewed by the local building inspector. The Town has hired an engineering firm out of Glenville, New York to review the plans (which we have to pay for). Once he approves them, we get a permit.
I am sorry it is taking so long. It is not financially good for me either for this delay to be occurring. Another item that I would have to explain to you in person. God bless all of you who are still hanging in there waiting to come back. Terry

Hi Everyone,
We had good news today. We got confirmation that the insurance company was releasing a substantial partial payment which we will receive this week. So we gave Jeffords Steel the go ahead to fabricate the steel. The fabrication date is May 11, 2009. The delivery date is May 18, 2009. We hope to be applying for a permit to erect the steel early next week, i.e. the week of April 27. Before the steel is delivered we hope to excavate and pour the footings so we are ready to erect the steel when it is delivered. A subcontractor will erect the steel and he estimates a little over two weeks to complete the job. That would give us a steel framed building by the end of the first week in June. We would then have to infill steel studs between the steel columns.
We are formulating plans now to decide how to build as quickly as possible. Our current brainstormed plan would be to run two separate crews on 4 10 hour days with the overlapping of crews staggered on different days (so both crew are not there on the overlapping day). We will also try to have a large enough crew to work on all areas at once.
This is an estimated timetable based on getting permits from the Town. By the end of next week we will know whether this plan will be confirmed. If it is, we will try to line up construction crews so we can give an estimated time of opening the different components. Terry

Comfort Inn complex-First Update

Hi Everyone, I want to start off by apologizing that we have not started this blog as a method of communicating with you sooner. It is very difficult for me to believe we the fire occurred on November 15^th last year and we are now at April 5^th and we have not started construction. What follows is a summary of what has happened so far.

1. CAUSE AND ORIGIN PHASE

Determination of cause and point of origin of the fire-the first two weeks after the fire, the New York State Fire cause and origin officials studied the site to determine what caused the fire. What we have heard so far is that it was caused by New York State Electric and Gas Corporations (NYSEG) loss of one phase of its three phase power supply in our district. It caused a surge which overheated a wire and started the fire in the pool area. During the first week, we hired a public adjusting firm (NFA) to assess the value of the loss and negotiate the settlement. We also immediately started the research and planning to rebuild a better Comfort Inn Complex. I retained McKenna Associates architectural firm who I have worked with for years.

2. INTERESTED PARTY INVESTIAGTION PHASE

The next phase involved our insurance company notifying NYSEG and an Electrical Contractor of their potential liability for the fire and that they would be seeking reimbursement from them for the money they will have to pay us on this claim. They had to give them time to investigate this site for the cause and origin and to evaluate the amount of the loss. Our adjusters, NFA, also began their evaluation of the amount of the loss. This involved literally listing and counting every piece of personal property on the site including items that were not damaged. They had to asses every aspect of building damage. It was not until January 12^th that we got permission from the Insurance Company to take back control of the building and demolish the unusable portions.

3. DEMOLITION PHASE

The demolition phase required permits from the Town of Plattsburgh, the New York State Department of Labor and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. This project took us several weeks. During this time, NFA was still working on there assessment of the total loss for building and personal property. The insurance company’s people were doing the same evaluation of building and personal property loss.

4. CONCLUSION OF NFA ASSESSMENT PHASE

NFA concluded their assessment of building loss on January 26^th, 2009 and personal property on March 9^th, 2009. This information was voluminous. The insurance company has been reviewing this information and had a meeting with NFA and us on March 26^th at our temporary offices in Plattsburgh. We are supposed to have another meeting on April 27^th at which time we are supposed to have a settlement offer.

5. INSURANCE SETTLEMENT

Without the insurance company settlement, we are not able to proceed with construction. It will be a multi million dollar reconstruction project and our bank that holds the mortgage on the property will receive the money from the insurance company and disburse it to us. From their prospective, they need to control the money to protect their interest.

6. PERSONAL NOTE

I want all of you to know that I highly appreciate people who have the “INTERNAL PRIDE” in themselves that causes them to “CARE ABOUT DOING A GREAT JOB”. We want you back in the worst way. I will tell you that I had the “debate” that raged in my head whether to rebuild or not. At my age I could have taken the insurance money, sold what was left. The restaurant site would have been easy to sell. I could literally retire and not work anymore. I have chosen not to do that in large part because I feel an obligation to you and the community to restore this property and the jobs it created. I have to tell you it is a scary thing especially in light of the economic environment we will be opening in. However, I look forward to working again with all of you who really "CARE ABOUT DOING A GREAT JOB".

7. BUILDING PERMIT

I will not go into detail but we have struggled getting a building permit to start this construction. We hope to have the permit within the next two weeks. This will enable us to project a rough date for completion of the different phases of the construction. We will be opening Perkins/Legends/ Ballroom area before the hotel opens and the health club will be last. This is all because of the different amounts of construction to open each business. I will try to post an update twice a month-beginning and middle of the month. Thanks, Terry