Hilton Cleveland Downtown
Cleveland           
Award of Merit

Owner: Cuyahoga County
General Contractor: Turner Construction Co., Ozanne Construction Van Auken Akins Joint Venture
Lead Design Firm: Cooper Carry
Structural Engineer: Barber & Hoffman Inc.
MEP Engineer: Karpinski Engineering
Architect of Record: VOA Associates (Now Stantec Chicago)

The Hilton Cleveland Downtown is the city’s tallest hotel at 32 stories. It’s also the first major hotel built in the metropolitan area in 25 years. It consists of 600 rooms, a restaurant, two bars, two ballrooms, a convenience store, a gym, an indoor pool and 50,000 sq ft of meeting space.

The hotel needed to be open by June 2016 so it could be the headquarters hotel when Cleveland hosted the Republican National Convention the following month.

Meeting that deadline would prove to be a daunting challenge. A total of 57 days were lost due to wind and cold throughout the winter of 2014-2015, 14 days in February alone. Despite the weather setback, Turner Construction Co. and joint venture partners Ozanne Construction and Van Auken Akins applied daily foreman huddles, pull-planning scheduling, scheduled overtime and off-hours work, and weekly construction meetings to finish the project on time. During the challenging winter weather, Turner still found a way to have more than 384 tons of precast concrete panels installed.

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