Farmers and Mechanics Becomes Even More Hospitable
By Terry Olsen, AIA, CSI, LEED AP

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What a holiday treat! CSI members spent a jolly afternoon and evening in downtown Minneapolis during the prime holiday shopping season, enjoying the festive décor of not just one, but TWO hospitality venues. On Monday, December 10, 2007, guides intimately familiar with the project gave tours of the historic Farmers and Mechanics Bank building, which has been newly converted into a luxury Westin hotel. The group then sauntered past the decorative lights to the Hilton to continue the merriment of the evening.

Historical Background
The historic Farmers and Mechanics bank building is actually a combination of two separate and very different buildings. The original art deco 1941 bank building contains the large gathering public spaces, where the bank tellers would greet the hard workers of their day. In 1961, the same firm added a 10-story office tower, with pastel metal panels and glass windows of the modernist movement. Now, over 45 years later, this complex is under construction again. This time the phoenix rebirth took one-and-a-half years of design through construction with many interesting twists along the way.

Raising the Roof … Or Not
The Ryan Corporation purchased the building, as the owner for a short time, and had negotiations with Westin Hotel to create a unique hospitality experience in the heart of downtown. Westin needed 11 floors to make the project financially viable. As a ten-story building, the first thought would be to remove the roof and add a story. But Ryan Companies was concerned about the potential risks of water or moisture penetration damaging the historic interior finishes while the roof would be removed.

It just so happened that the tenth floor was taller than the other floors; housing a theater, a cafeteria and Board Room. The architect, Troy, from Elness, Swenson, Graham, told them they were short one foot from being able to split the space into two separate floors, albeit with slightly lower floor to floor heights. (Honestly, not noticeable, but not quite to the spacious standards of the Westin Hotel corporation.)  Mike Hemstad, structural engineer with Meyer, Borgman, Johnson, came up with that foot.

By adding intermediate columns to the double-wide bays, they would be able to cut the extra deep W30 wide flange steel beam down in depth and gain the added inches. So the eleventh story was ingeniously squeezed in between the tenth floor and the roof.

Adjacent Building – A Vacation
The Dain Rauscher building next door arranged to have the alley vacated a number of years ago, and then built a 6-story addition to its building, tight to the bank. This meant that for the Westin, the first six stories on that side of the building could not contain windows. The first three floors contained public spaces and meeting rooms, so these were not an issue. However, generally people staying in hotels do not want windowless rooms. So an innovative internal courtyard with a Zen garden of bamboo and rock was designed as a peaceful, tranquil alternative to windows on the bustling busy streets below.

TV - Making it all Possible
Ironically, it was the creation of flat screen TVs that have made this project viable. The additional two feet in each room, normally occupied by the depth of the tube, is now given back to the rooms to use as circulation space. The model room we visited looked modern and high tech, and does not appear to be crunched for space as would have been with traditional electronics.

From Bank Vaults to Wine Vaults
For security, the doors and frames of the vaults were cast into the concrete. As if that were not enough of a deterrent, the two beautifully, custom-designed vault doors in the basement weighed in at 13,000 lbs each.  For the new hotel layout, they wanted to reuse the doors. But, of course, the vault doors were not in the right locations, so they had to be moved. One rigger came to move the doors, looked at them, scratched his head, then walked away. A second rigger came to move the doors, looked at them for a week, and then walked away. Now, there are only so many riggers in the metro, and they were running out of them. The third rigger finally decided to take on the project, but not without many interesting hurdles. In order to take down the steel-lined vaults to move the doors, they ended up using blowtorches to cut the steel into sections, which would fall to the floor with an earth shattering noise.  Fortunately for all involved, the vault on the first floor was left in place and is now a decorative place to hold wines.

From Drive-thru to Pool
The third floor contains the exercise room. But to make the hotel financially viable, in addition to its exercise room, it needed to have a pool. And no, not just a wading pool would do, it had to be a swimming pool; a heavy, stainless steel swimming pool.

So where in a bank would one locate a swimming pool? Well, many years earlier, with the advent of drive-thru tellers in suburban banks, Farmers and Mechanics had decided it was important to serve automobiles downtown, as well. Thus, it created a drive-thru bank. However, there was insufficient room to circulate a car in and out of the tight area. So the bank had a column removed and a turntable added.  A car would drive in, rotate on the turntable, pull up to the teller window, make the transaction and drive out. Rather impressive – and that would have been a neat feature to keep. However, this feature was located right below the intended location for the swimming pool. Something like 72 tons of water from the pool weighing down on the columnless space below just did not sound like a good idea. So our mighty structural engineer added the column back in. Installing that column was a challenge, of course.

They needed significant steel under the pool and hot tub to accomplish this weight support, so two welders spent eight to nine hours in an enclosed space continuously welding the new column to the beam.  Afterward, they were exhausted, beet red, and relatively fried. But amazingly they got it done!

Speaking of welding, it is very important that you not have a leak from the swimming pool into the spaces below. Did I say VERY important not to have a leak?  It took a couple of welders a full day of continually welding the stainless steel pool to complete that portion of the pool project.  

The pool then took another turn, so to speak. The placement of the deep vs. the shallow end of the pool was not clear on the drawings.  So prior to installation of the pool, the Ryan Companies Site Superintendent made an executive decision – that the shallower end of the pool should be next to the hot tub.  That seemed to make sense. After installation of the pool was underway, the architect’s design intent was made clear – that the DEEPER end would be next to the hot tub. Oops. Don’t think those welders were going to change it at that point…they were pretty hot and bothered by then!

Changing the building usage from a bank to a hotel was actually beneficial from a code standpoint. The original building was designed for office structural loading, and the new building use as a hotel, has a lower design load per code. What this means is that the building had additional structural capacity, and this was cumulative going down the building. So adding the weight of the pool was not such a big deal as we would anticipate (or so the structural engineer assured us. And if he’s happy, I’m happy.)

Public Spaces
The Minneapolis skyway system has an inviting overlook viewing what used to be the bank teller area below. This area has been converted into a dining area, with several private dining rooms, and the food is good, from what I hear. The dining experience allows one to eat underneath the original chandeliers, designed to be lowered so the lamps could be changed. Of course, the mezzanine above those fixtures was originally wood, and in the you-touch-it-you-bought-it requirements of the code, the wood floor in that area had to be replaced with non-combustible steel grating.

One More thing to Top It All – a Canopy
From this dining room is a beau tiful two-story glass window front façade over the entrance doors. Westin hotel standards require a canopy, which also makes sense in the Minnesota climate. But with this monumental glass artwork, they could not hang a canopy support from it.

Lurking under the sidewalk of many of the buildings in downtown Minneapolis are electrical vaults, mechanical rooms, old coal chutes and delivery spaces. This building is no different, with electrical vaults right below the front entrance. In order to support a canopy in front of that glass window, two posts had to be very carefully located, and the canopy actually is cantilevered from them.

There were other feats, like moving banks of elevators and their related pits, cutting historic limestone exterior for new window locations and reusing all the cut pieces for infill with a net gain of 3 pieces without purchasing any new, and maintaining the historic Board room. It would be easy to appreciate this building for its original design, but having walked through the process, the renovation of the bank is something to be truly valued.