Urban High-Rise Hotel in Chicago Built Lean + Green

A newly opened 17-story, 206-room Home2 Suites by Hilton Chicago River North, located in Illinois, recently opened. Mortenson teamed up with lead developer and owner Akara Partners on the $67-million extended-stay hotel, one of the few Home2 Suites by Hilton’s urban high-rise hotels, while also serving as the Design-Builder with Norr Architects.

The general contractor built the flagship hotel in just 14 months on the site of a former parking lot. Unlike the smaller, three-story Homes2 Suites by Hilton suburban locations, the 120,000-square-foot River North building features a modern glass enclosure system and a jump-lobby configuration to maximize space for 5,000 square feet of ground floor retail.

To meet the challenges of constructing the custom-built hotel while ensuring quality and safety on a site with zero lot lines in a busy city neighborhood, the contractor employed the following best practices:

• Virtual reality technology, coupled with a full-scale physical room model, streamlined final room layouts and décor decisions, including opting for bigger televisions, selecting the color of fabric piping and choosing a different back wall color for the open kitchen cabinets.
• Lean construction enabled greater efficiency and productivity, as well as a safer and cleaner work site. The project had 520 days and 180,000 work hours with zero lost-time injuries.
• Green building practices included sorting, recycling and tracking nearly 90% of construction waste so it was not added to landfills. Along with a green roof and using environmentally sustainable materials, paint, carpet and finishes, the hotel exceeded the city of Chicago requirement of achieving Green Globe certification and expects to be awarded two Globes.

Photos courtesy of Akara Partners.