I wasn’t sure what a flying staircase looks like, but that’s what the crew over at Kendall Yards said would be happening Monday morning. As you may have heard, we’re in the home stretch of construction on our new Inlander HQ (right up on the north ridge of the gorge, between Maple and Monroe), and Monday was the day our steel staircase was coming. When I showed up, the guys from Kilgore and Mandere all had their game faces on.
There it was — a 4,000-pound monster dangling from a loader crane parked where our lobby is going to be. One of the guys told me they roped off the basement just in case. “If we drop that thing, he said, “it’s going right through the floor.”
Well OK then. I went to work and hoped for the best.
It’s so cool to watch it all come together, the various experts all doing their part to make something amazing — Jason Lathrop, the superintendent on our site for Kilgore Construction; Joe Frank pulling all the threads together at Greenstone; and our architect Chris Olson of Nystom + Olson. It reminds me of our newspaper — that spirit of teamwork, competence and innovation is something we definitely have in common with the crew at Kendall Yards.
I came back at lunchtime Monday, pulled on my “Inlander” hard hat and stepped inside. There it was, the steel staircase installed and bolted onto the structural beams; the floor beneath it, fully intact. Beautiful.
The time to appreciate it is short, however, as it starts again. Do we want dimmers on those lights over there, and what kind of door did I have in mind for here? Oh, and get ready because they’re coming to pour the sidewalk.
And I thought making a newspaper was crazy!
