Wilhelm repairs and improves a battered tower

Posted : 05/25/2010

Regions Tower, one of Indiana's tallest buildings, was a mess after a spring storm in 2006: windows blown out, damaged window frames, office furniture and art works thrown around, and carpets soaked.

Building tenant Dan Riffel describes stepping into some of his firm's offices more than 30 stories up: "The windows were gone.  It was like walking out onto the patio of a high rise."

How strong was the wind?  A powerful updraft shot up a core elevator shaft, lifting a heavy elevator cab high enough to slip its steel cable off a pulley.

The building was broken and battered.  It looked as if it had been in a fight... and lost.

Wilhelm Construction is leading a team to repair Regions Tower and give it new life.

To hear Wilhelm's Jeremy Ayres describe it, the project sounds like a big Erector Set.  Working with architectural plans from Gensler & Associates of Chicago, Wilhelm ironworkers built a steel frame around the 36-story building, welding it to existing vertical columns.  Large glass curtain wall panels bolted to the frame became the building’s new doubled-paned, UV resistant "skin."

Working on scaffold platforms in crews of 8-12 people, they were like artists hanging work in an outside gallery.  Their audience was far below; but the closest critics were only inches away inside the offices.

"People would ask me, 'what are those guys doing out there,'" says Riffel, facilities manager of the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister.  "But the distraction was really only minimal."

Now finished installing the new skin, Wilhelm is removing the old exterior from the inside, beginning on the top floors.  Tenants temporarily re-locate to a vacant office suite on the Tower’s fourth floor as Wilhelm works floor-by-floor to take out the former outside walls, accomplishing a floor every seven weeks.

Richard Hardin, manager of the building for McKnight Properties, the owner, says, "Wilhelm is very understanding about our position with clients.  They work around the tenants' schedules.  No one has done this type of work around here before.  Wilhelm is doing a good job, and we've had very good reaction from tenants."

Riffel adds that he likes the wider field of view from his new windows, thanks mostly to window mullions that are less than one-third the width of the old 12 ones.

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