Ah, the historic Empire State Building. Beloved icon of Manhattan, it reaches 102 floors high – 1,872 steps to the top. A city within a city, many businesses call this skyscraper home, including LinkedIn, Shutterstock, HNTB, Citizen, Coty and others too numerous to mention. In fact, with 2.8 million rentable square feet and so many businesses inside, the building has its very own ZIP code – 10118.
Recently, one of those businesses decided to relocate – a law firm occupying the 68th floor – and Eagle Transfer made it happen. Eagle Transfer disassembled, executive wrapped, moved and reassembled all partner furniture, computers and monitors, file cabinets, desks, chairs and other office furnishings. And, because it’s a law firm, years and years of files were packed and relocated to the new office. Each of the 14 staff members possessing at least 20 boxes of files! Although this move was small in scale – the quirks of the building are what made this office relocation stand out from the others.
Scheduling. The move was scheduled at night to cause minimal downtime to the firm, and minimal disruption to other tenants. Attorneys, associates, administrative staff and paralegals needed to be on-board with the schedule and ready to move.
Tight security. As a tourist attraction (and potential terrorist target) the Empire State building has extremely tight security. We worked closely with the Building Management and Operations teams to gain after-hours clearance for all of our commercial moving staff.
Freight elevators. Although the Empire State boasts 73 Otis elevators, only a four of them are freight elevators. The normal operating hours for the freight elevators are 8:00AM- 6:00PM, so we scheduled with the Building Ops team, noting that elevators are subject to availability and are available on a “first-come, first-served” basis. (If another office had been moving, that might have led to problems!) All access was via sidewalk elevators in the basement – through corridors and then up via the four freight elevators. To make things even more tricky – not all elevators serve all floors.
Handle with Care. Because the building is on the National Historic Register, movers need to adhere to even more stringent guidelines regarding the care and protection of the elevators, floors and walls of the building. All dollies, panel carriers, jacks, needed to be in good condition; iron wheels are not permitted in the building. All carpeted areas needed be protected – wall-to-wall floor protection consisted of brown paper, Masonite sheets taped with duct tape and then covered by Koroflex. Walls needed to be protected by W&H corrugated paper (with Masonite underneath in freight areas). Shoe-wiping mats were placed at all entry points to adjacent areas.
Despite all of these restrictions, thanks to Eagle Transfer’s professionalism and expertise, the law firm found themselves ready to unpack and start working in their new Third Avenue offices the very next day. It was an open and shut case!
Eagle Transfer relocated Kudman ,Trachten & Aloe a law firm. From the Empire State Building 68 floor to 800 Third Ave 11 floor. Move consist of 14 attorneys, associates, administration, and paralegal’s. Lots of file content moved also. Eagle Transfer had to disassemble, executive wrap, move and reassemble all partner furniture to fit into their new office. The move was done in one night. Eagle worked with the tight security at the Empire State Building.