Morgan Construction Ent. completes 160,000 s/f ambulatory care facility for Mount Sinai Medical Ctr.

Arthur Brisbane, a journalist for Randolph Hearst and part-time developer, built the 102nd Street Garage as part of a large scale real estate deal which made him quite unique among working NYC newspaper men. Brisbane in 1926 built the Ritz Tower Apartment Building, the Ziegfeld Theater and Warwick hotel. But not even the visionary Brisbane could have foreseen the future conversion that would transform his 160,000 s/f garage into an ultra-modern ambulatory care facility for The Mount Sinai Medical Center. The new ambulatory care facility (CAM) would provide the desired swing space for the decanting of three existing buildings located on the 101st street block between Madison and Fifth Aves. The new lot created the footprint for Mount Sinai's pending Center for Advanced Medicine (CSM), a new research building for transitional science. With the clock ticking down to meet the proposed construction schedule, the sixteen-month turn-key Design-Build project was awarded to Morgan Construction. Morgan defined several logistical mandates that were essential to meet the design and construction schedules. Coordinated design efforts by Morgan Construction (design-builder), Perkins Eastman (project architect), Atkinson Koven Feinberg (project engineer) and Severud (project structural engineer) became critical during the early months of the project; constant communication, engineering and design refinements were necessary in order to ensure that all major construction milestones were met. Severud's structural reframing and shell reconfiguration of the central core (fire stairs, elevator shafts and mechanical shafts) were prerequisites to the demolition phase and were completed prior to the removal of the existing concrete vehicle ramps. During the design and early phases of the project the seismic structural bracing began to take shape. The braces are located in the middle of the core in both the east and west wings. The fact that the building's two wings have a five-foot floor elevation differential necessitated the deliberate and precisely coordinated installation of these seismic bracings. Morgan solved the vertical and horizontal access problem by dedicating three elevators to each wing, effectively organizing the building into two sides: allowing the West Wing to become devoted to Medical School functions and dedicating the East Wing to Medical Services and Clinics. The typical slab-to-beam (bottom edge) height for the project framework was eleven feet. In order to facilitate the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and sprinkler (MEPS) installation within the ceilings, the ductwork mains were raised to elevations that were sufficient to allow ductwork distribution for the outlying bays. By raising these ductwork mains, a "free space" of one foot was created. The majority of the project was designed to have ceiling heights of a uniform eight feet, one of the design goals originally required by the Mount Sinai clinical departments. By raising the mains and creating that extra space; the design-build team was able to accommodate all MEPS, IT and low voltage systems. In addition to the structural beam cuts, light fixtures were custom ordered to be 1-1/4" in depth to clear the beam bottoms and match the room layouts thereby ensuring that all ceilings met the eight foot height design criteria. Beam cuts were expedited with the structural engineer, following the construction sequence of top-to-bottom flow of trades through all the floors of the project. By keeping the floor design as generic as possible construction tasks were able to proceed quickly and with minimal costs incurred from field condition delays. Paramount for establishing the Central Core design and construction, Morgan Construction worked with Perkins Eastman and Otis Elevator to determine the elevator pit size and location. This coordination between design-build team members was essential so that the new state-of-the-art Gen 2 elevators could be pre-purchased and the schedule accelerated. The pit locations were coordinated in size and depth. Meanwhile, Mount Sinai, Morgan, Perkins Eastman and AKF were programming and designing the interior fit-out of clinics to meet the intended occupancy date of April 1, 2008. The historic exterior façade received a comprehensive makeover that included the installation of new windows, Local Law 11 restoration, new entrance areas with canopies, storefront and limestone enhancement. A spacious lobby was incorporated to provide access for patients in wheelchairs, walkers and stretchers. Between the East & West wings a soaring central atrium was carved out of the middle of the building. It spans the entire height of the structure and allows generous amounts of natural light to diffuse through all of the areas within.