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Pere Marquette progress slow but sure

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Model rooms approved, guts nearly replaced; Matthews shooting for April 30 opening

  

There was a time when the restaurant at the Hotel Pere Marquette had a special table that was where young men would propose to young women, where they then would sit when celebrating their anniversary or on other special occasions.

Table 19 was also where couples would sit when the husband forgot the anniversary or his wife's birthday.

Regardless the reason, special occasions were why that special table existed and it is why the new restaurant at the Hotel Pere Marquette will be called Table 19 when it is rebuilt and reopened next spring. "It will be a special place," owner Gary Matthews said Friday while conducting a tour of the hotel that is still mostly a shell of its former grandeur.

The purpose of this tour was to show off the guest rooms on the 10th floor that have been completely refurbished and approved by the Marriott Corp., which will manage hotel and will own the adjoining Marriott Courtyard when it is constructed.

Construction on that 10-story tower should begin in early spring, not long before the Pere Marquette renovations are completed and the hotel reopened. The Marriott Courtyard construction is awaiting demolition of the buildings along Main Street between the Pere Marquette and Monroe Street, which will occur once those properties are handed over to Matthews. That will be after the new Big Al's at Jefferson and Harrison streets is finished and opened, probably by early in 2013.

The six-story, 455-vehicle parking deck is nearly completed now and work will begin soon on the elevated walkway that will join the deck and both hotels to the Peoria Civic Center.

A tour through the Pere Marquette now yields little but bare concrete and dust, at least on the first two floors. But much of the preparatory work, including complete replacement of the heating and air conditioning, plumbing and electrical and even the sewer to and from the structure, are nearly finished now. Most of the windows have been replaced, most light fixtures have been repaired or replaced and even the original mural in the grandest banquet room in the building, the Cotillion Room, has been refurbished.

Work on the guest rooms and suites is getting underway now that the folks at Marriott have given their approval to the design of the rooms and the halls. There will be two shifts working six days a week on that part of the project. "Everything has to be sequenced from top to bottom. That takes extra time and that's why two shifts will make a big difference," he said.

Matthews explained that Marriott insists that two rooms of a hotel be finished before any others so it can approve the décor — even down to the doorknobs and receptacle plates — before allowing the remaining rooms to be done the same way. If the company doesn't approve of something it must be redone and reinspected, Matthews said.

"There were a few things they wouldn't approve the first time they came through, but it was mostly small things," he said, citing covers over the hallway lights, the number of electric receptacles between the beds in the double rooms, and the sheers on the windows. "Where they wanted something different we changed it. When they came back they approved everything so now we can get started in earnest," Matthews said.

A target opening date of April 30 has been set, which means the project will miss the city-imposed deadline of March 1 and thus cost Matthews about two months worth of penalties.

He said, however, it couldn't be helped because of the sheer magnitude of what had to be done and finding problems that took much longer to fix than originally expected.

For the latter he cited the asbestos abatement in the hotel basement. There was more than expected.

Another was the amount of time it took to clean out the 21 basement-to-roof shafts that hold the building's plumbing and electrical works before those works could be replaced. That's because when the shafts were opened workers found "an unbelievable amount" of wastewater and debris — including towels and other cloth that had been flushed down toilets — in the shafts. 

"The smell was horrible. But it's gone now and the shafts are clean, all the plumbing and electrical is replaced and another bonus is that the shafts all now have a two-hour fire rating. But the extra work took well over a million dollars," he said. "I can't complain, though. It was something that had to be done. And this will probably be the safest building in Peoria when we're finished."

The Pere Marquette will boast 284 rooms, with 30 suites, when finished. The new Marriott Courtyard tower will have 116 rooms, all suites. There will be retail space on the street level of the parking deck, along Monroe Street, and Matthews said he is excited by one likely tenant. He said he could not yet identify that tenant.

The restaurant will seat 224 and the new lounge area at the front of the hotel will be dazzling, Matthews said. "I don't want any part of it to not have the 'wow factor,'" he said.

The hotel will have 275 employees and Marriott will do four weeks of training before doing a soft opening in the spring, Matthews said. "They are meticulous in their training, which is good. When we open, they'll be ready," he said.

Matthews said he is pleased with the progress and that the project is basically on budget despite the issues that caused the renovations to take longer than expected. "We are literally rebuilding this structure from the inside going out. We tore this thing down to the skeleton. But it is going well," he said.

Paul Gordon is editor of The Peorian. He can be reached at 692-7880 or editor@thepeorian.com

 

 

 

About the Author
Paul Gordon is the editor of The Peorian after spending 29 years of indentured servitude at the Peoria Journal Star. He’s an award-winning writer, raconteur and song-and-dance man. He also went to a high school whose team name is the Alices (that’s Vincennes Lincoln High School in Indiana; you can look it up).