In addition to the facade, the greatest concentration of restoration work involved the 200-ft-long, 18-ft-wide arcade, where crews replaced or refurbished the arched wood door frames, transoms and marble sheathing on shop enclosures. In addition, about 50% of marble flooring required replacement, Hohmann says.

"We salvaged, cleaned and polished what we could," says Paric project manager Nick Hugeback, who says many existing finishes and areas were marred by years of neglect and, on upper floors, water infiltration.

"Taken together, Wright and Arcade have a number of varying elevations and roof levels, the latter the source of leaks and water damage," adds Paric project engineer Jason Szachnieski.

As a result, roof and structural slabs of the Wright Building required repair, says Hohmann, who notes floor slabs were constructed of cinder concrete that released rebar-corroding acid when wet. Damaged sections were removed and replaced with composite slabs.

Following an August 2014 groundbreaking, one of the first orders of business was to ensure the buildings were watertight by December, an undertaking that entailed placing temporary protective covers atop the roofs.

"That allowed us to proceeding with interior work during winter," Szachnieski says.

Since then, work has proceeded at a brisk pace, with interior and exterior work, including masonry repair, cleaning and replacement of thousands of windows, performed simultaneously. Crews are driving toward a December 2015 finish, though restoration work didn't begin in earnest until November 2014 due to the amount of demolition and remediation required to prepare for renovations.

"We've come a long way in a short time, but the project was well planned and well orchestrated from the outset," says Hugeback.

ASSEMBLING THE TEAM

Before being awarded the project in a competitive bid, Paric consulted with the developer and architect during the preconstruction phase, "helping us understand pricing and ensuring we were going down the right path with regard to materials-how, say, a topping slab would compare with hard wood in terms of costs," recalls Hohmann.

When it bid on a set of schematics prepared by Ebersoldt + Associates in December 2013, Paric did so as part of a team that included Earth City, Mo.- based mechanical contractor Charles E. Jarrell Contracting Co. and St. Louis-based electrical contractor Kaemmerlen Electric, both in design-build arrangements.