I feel obligated to point out this article in the Nevada Appeal about the Ormsby House, but my heart just isn’t in it. “We’re coming,” say the owners. “Construction will be done by the end of 2009”. I’ve heard it all before, and now I’m just tired of it. And what signs of their quick progress are to be seen?
Workers have installed new roofing and piping, fixed floors and ceilings and fireproofed the walls of one of the city’s most famous buildings. The escalator is being installed and dry wall is sitting in the skeleton of hotel rooms where it is ready to be hung.
Yeah, that’s great. But that’s the way the hotel was when I toured it in October, 2006. If the owners are really dedicated to getting it done by the end of 2009, they need to do one simple thing: get people in the building. Get work crews on site and start working. That building should be crawling with people every day. Plumbers, electricians, sheetrockers. The only way to make any progress is to actually work on it with more than the skeleton crew that you see haunting the place.
2009 is doable, it really is. But what they need to do is get 50 people in there on Monday working on it, and don’t let them stop until they’re done. Otherwise all this talk about being “committed to finishing the project” is just gas.
