As the muddy floodwaters subsided, images of a drowned city were quickly replaced by images of an industrious one. Nashville businesses and residents rapidly began the cleanup and recovery process after the devastating floods of May 1 and 2, pitching in to rebuild and lend their neighbors a hand. Although overwhelmed and saddened by the destruction, everyone’s first question seemed to be: How can I help?
Now that initial remediation and demolition efforts are nearly complete, contractors are moving full steam ahead on rebuilding the skeletons of hundreds of waterlogged commercial buildings. A glimmer of good news for Nashvillians: The work is mostly local, and it’s happening fast.
The Metro Codes Department has issued more than 3,000 building permits to catch up with a backlog of 11,000 properties damaged by the flood.
Three major landmarks are well on their way to showcasing stronger, more robust spaces that exceed the buildings’ original grandeur. Renovations to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center will be complete in December, including new elevators, communications systems, and basement-level HVAC, electrical and mechanical systems.
At the Gaylord Opryland Resort, a massive overhaul of the lobbies, signature restaurants and several guestrooms will be complete in November. The Grand Ole Opry House will reopen next month.
Here’s the story of how several standout construction companies called upon their patience, experience and ingenuity to help local businesses rise out of a tragic disaster.
Bringing the Symphony Back to Music City
Alan Valentine, president and CEO of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, didn’t start to worry about the rising floodwaters until Sunday night, May 2. Like many other leaders of local companies and institutions, he tried to carry on with business as usual, hoping the worst wouldn’t happen. The night before, the symphony hosted its scheduled concert, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, despite water beginning to seep into the basement. On Sunday morning, it hosted auditions for principal oboe, with musicians visiting from all over the world to vie for the coveted chair. While the Schermerhorn Symphony Center wasn’t technically located in the map of the flood plain, the waters rose nonetheless.
Just after the oboe auditions finished, Nashville Electric Service gave symphony staff just five minutes’ notice that it was about to shut off the symphony hall’s power. The backup generators kicked on, but the stage lifts—one for a grand piano and another spanning the front of the stage—were not on the emergency power system. Neither were the eight steel chair wagons weighing more than 90,000 pounds each, which can be motorized to conceal theater seats and reveal hardwood ballroom flooring.
Without a way to lift equipment from the basement, or to extract materials by flipping the chair wagons, Valentine knew trouble was on the way.
The river crested at 52 feet on Monday evening, May 3, causing the water table to rise. The force of the water cracked the floor slab of the Schermerhorn, filling the 2-story subbasement with 22 feet of water.
This is where 10 of the symphony hall’s 11 massive air handlers—designed to mask airflow noise and help create pristine sound conditions above—were housed. Electrical switchgear, commercial kitchen equipment, banquet tables and chairs, custom-made musical instruments, the console for a 3,568-pipe organ and the elevator systems also were located on the basement level.
The Nashville Symphony estimates the total damages at $40 million for cleanup, remediation, debris removal and reconstruction, as well as lost business.
“Our first thought was to call the original contractors,” Valentine says. Within one day, Nashville-based
American Constructors, which built the symphony hall in 2006, arrived onsite and hired a disaster response subcontractor.
“We got a handle on the situation really quickly, which was critical to mitigating the damage to the high-finish areas above the basement. The water stopped 5 inches short of reaching the slab that is the concert hall. We would have had a real mess if we hadn’t contained the flood to the basement,” Valentine says.
“It’s heartbreaking for me personally, because I was around for the very first conversation about the new facility, and I saw it through during the building process. It’s like watching your baby drown. But on the other hand, it’s a building, and we can fix it,” Valentine says. “And thank goodness we have a really talented contractor—we can’t thank them enough.”
John Madole, vice president of American Constructors, shared in the heartbreak. He oversaw the construction of the original building from top to bottom. He also began his career in music before he became an expert in construction.
Madole was staying at his family farm for the weekend when news of the flood hit. He rushed into the city on Tuesday, May 4, when the construction team and the symphony first met onsite, working from laptops and cell phones out in the yard.
“We went to work immediately setting up pumps and developing a plan to provide temporary air conditioning within the building,” Madole says. “It took well over a week to evacuate the water out of the basement. Right afterward, short of having a diving suit and air tanks, there was no way to assess the damage until millions of gallons of water in that basement were pumped out.”
Ten days after the flood, the water receded enough that symphony leaders and American Constructors could access the lower level of the building. It wasn’t a pretty sight: soaked chairs, gift shop items, spoiled food, percussion instruments and two waterlogged grand pianos littered the space. Behind the debris, the layers of electrical and mechanical damage were revealed.
“We knew from the outset that this was going to be a major deal,” says Dan Brodbeck, president and CEO of American Constructors. “We restructured our management people, taking everything else away from John [Madlole] and having him focus on this job alone. We did the same with the project managers and project coordinators.”
Organizing hundreds of workers into two 12-hour shifts, American Constructors led the effort to evacuate all materials, and then categorize, photograph and barcode every item for insurance purposes.
Special considerations needed to be made for the night shift, such as finding available supervisors and the proper lighting to illuminate the jobsite. Adding to the challenge, all persons in contact with the contaminated materials needed to complete hazardous materials training and wear full hazmat gear throughout the remediation process. Clothing worn by the workers, as well as any salvageable items, underwent a safety-cleared biowash process.
“I don’t think you can find a company in Nashville that is used to working in such hazardous conditions, and doing so in hazmat suits,” Madole says. “The protocols in isolating the damage from the rest of the building were extraordinary.”
American Constructors trained 650 workers to perform remediation work—all of whom received diphtheria and tetanus shots within the first week of the disaster. Shots were flown into Nashville and administered by nurses onsite. Hazmat gear had to be gathered from multiple locations as well. Under the supervision of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), each time a worker emerged from the basement, he needed to remove his exterior clothing for cleaning. Washers and dryers were kept onsite to clean the
color-coded vests used to designate six-person work crews.
Once the debris was pulled out of the building, it was laid out on the street, where symphony staff and insurance agents combined forces to sort and determine which materials were salvageable. In the end, 22 tractor trailers were filled with debris.
While all this took place,
I.C. Thomasson Associates, Inc., Nashville, worked with American Constructors to engineer the new electrical and cooling systems that allowed workers to continue preserving African mahogany wood finishes and other sensitive systems indoors.
Many other Nashville-based subcontractors participating in the cleanup were part of the construction team that built the Schermerhorn back in 2006, or were involved in its maintenance during the past four years.
“These guys knew the building inside and out because they were part of the original construction team. That was critical to being able to find everything that was damaged down there,” Brodbeck says. “We knew there would be challenges, but putting the right people in place was critical to overcoming them.”
The
Lee Company is leading the HVAC and plumbing replacement, and American Commercial Industrial Electric, LLC is performing the electrical upgrade.
Bouchard Fire Protection (a division of John Bouchard & Sons Co.) is performing the fire sprinkler work.
Coordination among the symphony staff and the construction teams has been the key to a positive working relationship, with multiple contractors working in close quarters and meeting to discuss construction progress several times a day.
“We’ve now shifted to reconstruction mode, and we’ve ordered all the replacement equipment. Now begins the process to rebuild all the lower level systems,” Madole says.
Valentine says a major focus of the reconstruction is mitigating against future hazards by moving communication and electrical equipment to higher floors; putting rollers and casters on large equipment so it can be removed quickly; and putting the stage lifts on the emergency power system.
While these improvements are not included in the initial $40 million damage estimate, the additional expenses may be covered under FEMA’s Section 406 disaster assistance grant program for hazard mitigation. To cover any financing gaps, the symphony launched a fundraising campaign that includes benefit concerts and CD sales.
Considering the level of “can-do” spirit Valentine witnessed after the flood (he literally had to turn away volunteers at the door because they hadn’t completed hazmat training), he has no doubt the community will be more than willing to help the Schermerhorn come back stronger than ever.
“This is an amazing town,” he says.
Concerts temporarily being held at other venues will return to the facility after its grand re-opening in January.
Opryland Shines Its Boots for a Mega-RecoveryAt the 4 million-square-foot Gaylord Opryland Resort campus, the post-disaster numbers are even more alarming: up to $225 million in remediation and rebuilding costs, nearly 2,000 Gaylord jobs lost, 1,600 cleanup workers required onsite during the peak of remediation and 1,200 dumpsters filled with debris.
Like the contractors working across town at the symphony hall,
D.F. Chase, Inc., Nashville, was one of the masterminds behind the resort’s original design and construction in 1976. Not surprisingly, the general contractor was one of the first to get a call from Gaylord Entertainment Co. after the flood. It is now leading $100 million worth of work on the hotel portion of the property, with just five months to complete a substantial renovation.
“It’s a personal job for me,” says Dean Chase, D.F. Chase’s president. “I go back to the very beginning when this place was merely a piece of dirt.”
Of the Gaylord’s 2,881 rooms, only 117 were damaged. But, 800,000 square feet of public convention space—including lobbies, atriums, restaurants, convention rooms and back-of-the-house facilities—were under water. The power house and HVAC distribution system were completely incapacitated.
“All the power and electrical went out,” Chase says. “We had to make a schedule and a scope of work right away, but we had to wait and see what was damaged once the water was out.”
To create a sense of order among the chaos, D.F. Chase broke down the work into eight major areas, each supervised and staffed by a different project manager. Substantially damaged areas include the Cascades lobby, restaurant and bars; the Garden Atrium’s two restaurants; the 117 damaged guest rooms; the ground floor exhibit space and its supporting IT infrastructure; as well as a large conference breakout room and its supporting offices.
After the water subsided and 25 percent of the power was restored, gaining control of the air quality was a primary concern so that high humidity would not cause additional damage in the unaffected areas. Next, the flooded areas were stripped down to the studs, with national emergency services contractor BMS CAT handling the remediation during the first 30 days. Major repair and replacement of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems continued throughout the summer.
Meanwhile, Gaylord Entertainment and the D.F. Chase team began to redesign portions of the resort, especially those that were overdue for infrastructure upgrades before the flooding. “Some of it is not going to look much different on the surface, but many of the public areas will be designed to look even better,” Chase says.
Jack Daniels Saloon will move to a higher floor, while the gutted space on the lower level will be transformed into a new Italian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant and a wine bar.
The complete closure of the property, although a huge headache, provided Gaylord officials with an opportunity to spiff up 600 guest rooms that did not get renovated during its last room upgrade in 2008. Several infrastructure systems were reaching the end of their life cycle, flooding or no flooding. “Although the property looks new all the time, in reality, a lot of the stuff was pretty old, when you consider it was built in 1976,” Chase says. The new systems boast better energy efficiency, saving the resort money in the long run.
All hotel work is on schedule for completion in November—a feat requiring D.F. Chase to manage approximately 650 crew members (with up to 900 at the peak of reconstruction) seven days a week in 12- to 14-hour shifts.
Several local subcontractors have been instrumental in making the work happen on a fast track. Wolfe and Travis Electric is leading the electrical reconstruction.
Nashville Machine is handling the plumbing and mechanical systems. Civil Constructors is in charge of civil engineering and construction work. Beech Construction Services is rebuilding the power plant and support facilities. Dozens of other consultants, design firms, remediation and IT firms are involved as well.
“We were very fortunate to have a qualified and dedicated team of on-staff engineers and local contractors, MEP engineers and subs who have intimate knowledge of the hotel because of their work on its original construction and several expansions over the years,” says Bennett Westbrook, senior vice president of development for design and construction at Gaylord Opryland.
“Many of the local contractors and engineers have ‘grown up’ with the Opryland Hotel and the Grand Ole Opry. Over time, they have developed a tremendous amount of personal loyalty to the two institutions,” Westbrook adds.
R.C. Mathews Contractor, Nashville, which has a long-term relationship with Gaylord Entertainment, is responsible for the restoration of the Grand Ole Opry House, where floodwaters rose nearly 4 feet above the stage floor. The company recently completed the interior wall reconstruction, with permanent power restored to the new switchgear at the end of July.
“This project is unique in that we are racing to complete a large volume of work in less than 90 days,” says Walker Mathews, president of the company. Crews are working multiple shifts seven days a week. “There is constant daily communication among our staff, the Opry staff and our subcontractors to keep the decision-making process ahead of the work in the field. In some cases, a decision is made in a meeting and immediately radioed to the field to workers ready to implement the work.”
The Grand Ole Opry is expected to reopen Oct. 1. “With an opening date cast in stone, we have to constantly monitor the supply chain to ensure key materials are onsite when required,” Mathews says. “The key to the success of this project is the dedication of all the field staff who have been willing to put their personal lives on hold in order to focus on the completion of this project.”
With the closure of the largest hotel in the Nashville area, the city government is losing nearly 25 percent of its hotel tax collections, and the local economy is missing out on $50 million in revenue a month. Although Gaylord paid its employees their full salaries until June 12 and their former benefits through September, it recently laid off 1,743 workers. A rehiring effort is planned in the weeks leading up to the resort’s reopening.
On a larger scale, the flood damaged nearly 3,000 businesses that normally bring in $3 billion in revenue and employ 9,500 people, according to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.
“We can’t fail. It’s not allowed. It’s too important to the Gaylord and the city,” Chase says.
For more information about flood relief efforts and rebuilding assistance programs, visit www.nashvillerecovery.com or www.floodsmart.gov.
Stansell Electric Company, Inc., Nashville, didn’t have a disaster response plan to dust off and put into action when the Cumberland River crested. But, with some fast thinking by the management team and its employees, the company was able to salvage most of its office inventory and get back to work within a week’s time.
What couldn’t be salvaged—vehicles, computers, electrical equipment and more—was soon replaced or repaired thanks to the goodwill of Stansell’s neighbors and construction business partners, who helped the company secure a backup generator and begin the remediation work it needed to get back to work quickly.
After 14 inches of rain had poured down by Sunday, May 2, a group of employees decided to risk going to their office. They drove to Stansell Electric’s 254,000-square-foot facility and began moving important files, equipment and several computers to the second floor. Other valuables were placed on desktops, under the assumption, based on the 100-year flood plain, that the water wouldn’t rise that high.
By nightfall, the power was cut off and the water was knee-deep, causing a few employees to abandon their cars overnight.
On Monday, employees canoed around the building in 7-foot-deep water. “Peeking in the windows, you could see the water was halfway up the monitors on the desks,” says David Stansell, president. “It was frustrating because we knew things were messed up, but we couldn’t even get inside to fix them.”
After meeting at the home of the CFO, the management team decided to divide employees into task-related teams for power, remediation, estimates, IT systems, vehicles and, most importantly, one team solely dedicated to making sure its customers’ needs were met.
“That empowered people to know what they could do, and made it a little bit less overwhelming,” Stansell says.
By Thursday, the company had a generator up and running, and a neighboring business lent Stansell Electric a wireless connection so it could get in touch with its employees. Then, an emergency response contractor worked throughout the weekend to rip out damaged drywall, floor tile and wood, and seal off the headquarters’ top floor.
Stansell himself made a trip to Best Buy to replace computers, monitors and laptops, and had the items shipped to a general contractor friend’s office.
“By Monday morning [a week later], everyone had a cubicle or a small spot to work upstairs. It was high-fives all around,” Stansell says. “To get everyone back to work in one week was amazing.”
Stansell Electric’s next priority was reaching out to its previous customers as well as its commercial business neighbors to provide electrical recovery services. By being available almost immediately, the company strengthened pre-existing relationships and created several new ones.
Because the company lost 30 of its trucks to flood damage, it rented vehicles and provided mileage reimbursement to employees who volunteered to use their personal trucks to visit customers.
The fast response allowed the company to submit an important bid just two weeks after the flood, as well as meet almost all its deadlines on active jobs. Much to Stansell’s relief, the employees who worked on the Sunday of the flood were able to salvage the high-tech equipment for a $1.5 million health care project under way in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “Those guys were the heroes of that project,” Stansell says.
Stansell Electric also has four tenants that lease space at its headquarters, all of which were operational within a month of the flood.
While the company took a financial hit from the disaster, Stansell is trying to stay positive. He is confident his flood insurance will provide the maximum payout of $500,000 for structural damage and $500,000 for the building’s contents.
In addition, he is impressed with the level of responsiveness by not only his employees, but the business community at large. Stansell Electric’s bonding agent personally helped with the cleanup, and its banker brought everyone lunch after conducting a walkthrough the first day the water receded. Some vendors even sent replacement materials free of charge.
“The good side is seeing how our people came together, how people rose to the occasion,” Stansell says. “People were working long hours in a tightly confined environment, and they rallied. It was almost fun—there was a buzz of people working together.”