The Carillon Tower, built in 1990, is a 24-story luxury office building with 3 levels of underground parking. The plaza space for the building sits above the underground parking and connects the office tower to the adjacent 16-story Grand Bohemian hotel.

The existing plaza system had numerous failures making it difficult to navigate, inadequately drained, and aesthetically unappealing to employees and visitors to the Carillon Tower.

Throughout the course of the plaza renovations, WGI was tasked as being the representative for the Carillon facility owner, with whom WGI has had a long-standing relationship. The Restoration team was able to assist with an evaluation of the construction documents for the new plaza system.

Recommendations were then provided to highlight and mitigate potential inadequacies in the design of the new system, after which excavation of the old landscaping and careful demolition of the waterproofing was carried out by the contractor.

Once the design review and demolition processes were complete, WGI assisted with supervising the installation of a new waterproofing membrane for the now-exposed structural slabs (sitting above the parking garage underneath).

The new system, complete with a 20-year warranty, consists of a hot-applied rubberized layer with a fabric reinforcing layer, followed by a protection board and specially designed mat to facilitate proper drainage. This creates a ‘bathtub’ effect, in which water can only escape the plaza through a series of new floor drains.

WGI performed regular site visits during the construction process to ensure that the plaza system was being built to industry standards. As is often the case o n restoration projects, WGI was closely involved in the detailing process on site. This meant providing instructions to the waterproofing contractor on how to terminate, splice, and build up the plaza system on various joints and surfaces, as well as help with interpreting the design documents.

The end goal of this attention to detail was to optimize the longevity and effectiveness of the new system in preventing water intrusion into the adjacent buildings and the parking garage below. Once the new waterproofing membrane was fully installed, it was leak-tested by a third party for any anomalies.

The transformation of the plaza space was then finished by the contractor with the installation of new landscaping, for a final product in the form of a first-class plaza space connecting the two neighboring buildings.

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