The 400-room, 14-story CitizenM hotel in Boston's Back Bay section. SMACNA member United HVAC won a $3.7 million contract to install all the ductwork for the hotel's ventilation, smoke removal and fire life safety systems.
In a high-traffic section of Boston, an area above the Massachusetts Turnpike is being turned into a commercial, retail and residential destination. And a SMACNA contractor played a major part in its redevelopment.
Known as “Parcel 12,” the development in Boston’s Back Bay section encompasses the area near the end of Boylston Street, Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue. A portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike runs under this bustling section of Back Bay, which is highly developed and has a constant flow of pedestrian and vehicle traffic.
In 2018, plans were announced to turn the area into a pedestrian- and tourist-friendly area, with bike paths, green space, offices, stores and a 144,000-square-foot, 14-story hotel built above the turnpike. Historic Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox, is also nearby.
Designed by Boston architecture firm Elkus Manfredi, the development includes 450,000 square feet of commercial space in addition to the hotel. Massachusetts-based auto shopping website company CarGurus Inc. is among the office tenants. Another 50,000 square feet is marked for retail and dining.
SMACNA member United HVAC, a design-build contractor based in Rockland, Massachusetts, was awarded a $3.7 million contract in 2021 to install all the ductwork, including the ventilation, smoke removal and fire life safety systems for the 400-room CitizenM hotel being built over the highway.
An unusual project
Tom Scolaro, United HVAC President, says the project’s scope and location was unusual. “Parcel 12 was the first air rights project in 30-plus years in Boston,” Scolaro says. “This project is not only built on top of the Mass Pike but the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) train line as well, making it a really tricky location to navigate for construction.”
“Air rights” refers to the ability to develop the vertical space above a property, which, in this case, referred to the state-owned turnpike.
Adam Lannan, Vice President of Operations at United HVAC, notes that the development was one of many projects delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. “I don’t think they even had one piece of steel in the ground, and work stopped,” he says.
Once the project was cleared to continue, United workers at the company’s 40,000-square-foot sheet metal shop fabricated 107,000 pounds of 16- and 24-gauge galvanized duct for the hotel.
“This project was a lot of rectangular,” Lannan says. “Each hotel unit had a real small air handler, and it had a supply and return plenum on both sides. Those all got prefabricated in our shop.”
That kind of preparation was key to keeping the project moving, he added. “We spent a lot of time prefabricating in our shop so we could just be ready to ship right out on carts and the guys could put them right up with the hangers that we already had laid out,” Lannan says.
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Left: Much of the ductwork for the hotel was manifolded at United HVAC's sheet metal shop before being installed on site. Right: Rectangular duct hangs in the hotel's second floor. The project used 107,000 pounds of ductwork. |
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Shop efficiency was key
Brian Harrington, a United HVAC project manager, says the company’s sheet metal shop was critical to the project’s success.
“The fact that we manifolded a lot of the materials and stock in our own shop really saved us on the field install,” he says. “That was something big.”
Another big help, according to Harrington: The Gripple Fast Trak hanger that was used to attach the Swegon grilles to the ceiling. The prefabricated trapeze-style hanger makes installing duct in tight spaces much easier.
Something else different about the project, Lannan says, was that the pressurization duct installed was under the hotel staircase as part of the hotel’s fire control system. “They actually had to put the staircase in, paint the staircase, then our duct was hung, exposed, just under the staircase,” he says. “So you’re walking underneath the pressurization duct instead of it being in a riser. Definitely very different.”
The CitzenM project was the first time United HVAC had installed Swegon grilles. These Sweden-made grilles were imported and shipped to Boston via barge — which was stuck in Boston Harbor for a couple weeks due to pandemic-related supply chain problems.
Harrington says the grilles are not like the units they typically work with. “These grills are unique in that the pitot tube is built-in for balancing purposes,” he says, adding that the European design had to be retrofitted to work with an American HVAC system. “They fit into the plenum box directly above the ceiling and have an open-face grille.”
United HVAC’s three years of work on the CitizenM hotel is finishing now. The hotel is scheduled to open to the public in October. The development of the area around the hotel is well underway. Stores are scheduled to open this fall. And while the area was called Parcel 12 during construction, it’s been given a new name: Lyrik. The name is a homage to the nearby Berklee College of Music and Boston Symphony Hall.
