HILTON GARDEN INN, Chicago
RETROFIT TEAM
ARCHITECT: Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Leopardo Companies Inc.
DEVELOPER: Phoenix Development Partners
PROJECT MANAGER: Daccord
MATERIALS
Located at 226 West Jackson Boulevard, a 1904 Frost-and-Granger-designed building boasting Classical Revival styling proved to be a fitting choice for transformation into a 135-room Hilton Garden Inn on the lower floors and a 215-room Canopy by Hilton Hotel above.
The Hilton Garden Inn boasts many notable accessibility features. In addition to an accessible business center, concierge desk, elevators, fitness facility, restaurant, meeting rooms, parking, entrance, registration desk and routes through the hotel, it provides accessible guest rooms with entry or passage doors offering 32 inches of clear width.
Seeking to create additional space within accessible guest rooms, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture and Phoenix Development Partners chose to install pocket door frame kits from Johnson Hardware to guide the rooms’ pocket doors within bathroom areas of the ADA-compliant rooms. The pocket door frame kits permit wider door openings to allow wheelchair and walker movement in and out. The kits also enable more efficient use of space because doors slide into walls as opposed to opening out.
Johnson Hardware’s Series 2000 Heavy-Duty Pocket Door Frame Kits were chosen because of their ability to endure daily use in a commercial setting. Although they are built to hoist heavy solid-core doors weighing up to 400 pounds each, the door kits deliver easy gliding, sliding back and forth with minimal effort. No more than 5 pounds of force is required to move the doors.
The kits, which were easy to install, included everything needed to implement their use in a commercial steel-stud framing application. Versatile enough to be adapted for non-standard wall thickness and block masonry walls, the kits also can be cut to accept smaller-sized doors. Nylon-encapsulated ball bearing wheels roll smoothly and quietly, and their tripod rocker design equalizes door weight across all wheels, helping prevent failure of wheels. The hardware design ensures doors won’t jump off their tracks.
POCKET DOOR FRAME KITS: Johnson Hardware
THE RETROFIT
The 248,000-square-foot, National Historic Landmark building features 350 rooms and suites across both hotels. The hotels were given separate first-floor lobbies preserved from the building’s original design, as well as 2,500 square feet of conference rooms and one fitness center for each. The project required the complete removal and rebuilding of the existing 15th floor to create a new 16th floor restaurant and lounge. A half dozen building elevators were renovated and a seventh added.
Both hotels welcomed their first guests in September 2021. The independent rooftop lounge and bar was unveiled early in 2022.
PHOTOS: Johnson Hardware