While many office professionals will remain remote into 2021, eventually companies will bring employees back to their workplaces for collaboration, to boost company culture, and to regain a separation between work and home. In the meantime, work continues in many office build-outs, including those in historic buildings that present the unique opportunity to blend history and modernity.
Inside Chicago’s historic buildings like the Merchandise Mart, the redeveloped Old Post Office, and other iconic spaces that have survived decades, tenant representatives, architects, interior designers and general contractors have the unique opportunity to create the next era of office space. These new office spaces honor the buildings’ historic integrity while delivering design, technology and amenities that will propel work into the future. But doing so is not without its challenges, even pre-pandemic.
As one of the early contractors to work inside the Old Post Office with two completed projects and three in progress, as well as a track record of additional projects in the Merchandise Mart and historic Fulton Market buildings, the Skender interior construction team has learned the unique nuances of building out offices in historic buildings.
Lesson 1: Merging old with new begins with care and planning.
The Old Post Office, one of Chicago’s most talked-about redevelopments of the past few years, actually comprises three buildings and 2.5 million square feet: the original six-story building and two nine-story buildings from the 1930s. The north and south additions have floor-to-floor heights as high as 19 feet, and they are connected to the original east building with corridors that have 16-foot ceilings. In addition to the varying ceiling heights, each of the buildings has unique requirements to maintain the historic designation. Some tenants are only in one of the structures, while others span all three.
All of these factors add up to challenges that are critical to understand and plan for from the outset, ideally using building information modeling (BIM). Once the client and project team are in alignment, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and National Park Service (NPS) review all drawings for tenants building in the space, as well as all the finishes selected, to ensure they comply with restoration guidelines.