Part facade support, part billboard. Those are some versatile shipping containers.
In the heart of the Fulton Market neighborhood, next to a king of the internet, giant spades are being used to club the ground in preparation for the new Ace Hotel.
If you don’t know jack about the Ace, it has a permit in hand after Portland-based Ace was dealt the all-clear to start construction back in November. Developer Sterling Bay anted up enough of a wager to score prime space, along with a zoning change in the manufacturing district, straight across the street from the Google building that’s just been rehabbed at 1000 West Fulton Market.
In the cards is a GREC Architects-designed 132,000-square-foot, 159-key hotel with ground-level retail space and an ever-important green roof. That zoning allowance, making it the only hotel smack dab in the middle of countless meat packers, along with its proximity to deep-pocketed Google, makes one think the Ace Hotel will be flush with guests from the moment it opens in 2017.
Right now, there are just a couple caisson-drilling rigs on the site, but you can expect to see a full house of Power Construction equipment there soon.
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- The “historical facade” deemed too important to be torn down.
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- Another angle of the painstakingly-preserved facade.
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- Don’t be fooled; demolition is done.
