A FEW BUMPS along the road for One Marquette Place, the brand new high rise apartment building on the lakeshore.
The latest one cropped up last Friday evening. The fire alarm went off, arousing residents on the first floor who had just moved in. But worse, a sprinkler on the fifth floor was activated–as it was supposed to–and then proceeded to send water through the walls all the way down to the first floor.
A portion of the first floor carpet was soaked.
Barry Polzin, the architect and one of the partners in the project, explains that the alarm was activated by heat lamps that were helping to dry the drywall up on the fifth floor. It apparently got a little too hot. Thus, the sprinklers.
Does seem like a lot of water must have been sprinkled for it to have traveled four floors down.
In any case, Polzin says, it’s been determined there’s no mold and they’re now making the necessary repairs.
This follows a series of delays at One Marquette Place where residents were given move-in dates in October…then November…then December. All deadlines were missed.
“We had a crappy autumn for weather,” Polzin explains. “That held things up, and then when winter came, it was just very difficult to get enough workers out here.”
First floor residents were finally able to move in during the first week of January, second floor residents are now moving in, and Polzin guarantees that floors three, four and five will be open for occupancy no later than February 7th.
Some residents are less than happy. Some, who’d been counting on the scheduled move-in dates, had to rent hotel rooms for days, weeks, even months while they waited for their apartments to open up.
Polzin understands. “But the new residents that I’ve talked to,” he says, “the ones who have moved in, are thrilled with what they have here. And now we’re getting more people off the street who come in and look around, and they want to move in.”
All’s well that ends well. That’s the hope, obviously.
And as any developer will tell you, stuff happens. Unforeseen delays are almost inevitable.
But for some residents, it will likely be a while before they’ll forget the inconvenience and added expense that accompanied the opening of their new home on the Lake.
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