September, 2003 - Page 1

Posted October 17, 2003

The big news comes first. September was the month of The Announcement. Also known variously as The Fracas or The Ultimatum. Whatever you name it, this was the month that the owners got fed up with the city bureaucracy and filed for a demolition permit for the Ormsby House. But after a tense week, with the future of the hotel at stake, they had a meeting with the city and had all their concerns resolved, and finally pulled the permit and agreed to go ahead with the remodel. Was the threat legit, or was it all a big bluff? Check out the whole story and decide for yourself.

The demolition plan really came as a surprise because work had been rolling right along all month. In fact, just the week before a crane had appeared onsite and parked itself by the front doors.

What could they be doing with a crane? I wondered. I looked around the grounds for something exciting that needed hoisting, but I didn’t see anything. So I sat back to wait and let it be revealed. And after a couple of days, a scaffolding started to rise along the east side of the hotel tower. The crane was there just to lift the scaffolding materials onto the roof of the casino.

They must have some serious plans for the hotel tower, to be draping it in scaffolding like this. Might there be some kind of paint coming in? Could the pale sandstone tan walls actually be going away? And of course there’s always the magic word that was uttered in this article: balconies.

The scaffolding reached to the sky, but right after that they filed the demolition permit, so things kind of stopped for a while after that.

Work continues on the front entrance. Concrete forms are being strung together, and a few steel beams have started to rise. The beams are the first pieces of the steel skeleton for the casino expansion.

The bridge and the hotel are still separated by the gulf of the ages. Visitors to the Ormsby House still have to make a 20 foot leap to get back to their cars.

The aforementioned steel skeleton will soon be bridging this gap. It’s all part of the expansion that’s bringing the south wall of the casino twenty feet out.

That’s not all that happened in September. Check out the next page.