Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 12, 1994 TAG: 9401120066
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, has scheduled a news conference today at the offices of Hayes Seay Mattern and Mattern, apparently to outline details of the company's role in the renovation.
The Pentagon in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., houses the administrative offices of the various branches of the armed services. It has not undergone a major renovation since it was built 50 years ago at the height of World War II.
Hayes Seay Mattern and Mattern is no stranger to federal projects or to the Washington area.
The company has designed and overseen major renovations at several museums of the Smithsonian Institution, has done previous Defense Department work and designed some of the subway stations on the Washington Metro.
The Pentagon renovation project began in 1992 with work on a new heating and cooling system. Visitors to Washington might notice a huge hole next to Interstate 95, which is part of that stage of the project.
Remodeling of the building is being conducted in six phases, to run through 2002. It will include installation of new floors, walls and energy-efficient mechanical equipment.
The basement portion of the project already has begun. Hayes Seay Mattern and Mattern's involvement is with the next phase, which includes one-fifth of the above-ground portion of the building. The value of the firm's portion of the work was not available Tuesday.
The project will involve only remodeling and renovation. Congress has directed that no additions be made to the building.
The Pentagon was not designed for modern offices, and the remodeling could create as much as 30 percent more office space, according to Joe Willoughby, an official in the building manager's office.
The Pentagon covers 29 acres, the largest ground area of any office building in the world. It contains 6.8 million square feet of floor space, or three times as much as the Empire State building. A typical shopping mall contains about 1 million square feet of space.
At one time during World War II, the Pentagon provided office space for 33,000 people. It is now occupied by about 25,000.
With five floors above ground and two below, the building is composed of five concentric five-sided rings. It contains 17.5 miles of corridors, 287 public bathrooms and more than 600 drinking fountains.
The South still was segregated when the Pentagon was built, and that accounts in part for the large number of bathrooms, which were designated by race as well as sex. Many of the bathrooms since have been converted to office space.
The building's five-acre central courtyard is being excavated to install new utility lines; and special care is being taken there, because it is thought to be a Confederate archaeological site, Willoughby said.
Some aspects of the renovation can be tricky, he said. For instance, when telephone cable was installed during the early 1940s, it was not color coded as it is now, leaving a tremendous sorting job for remodelers.
The remodeling, which must take place without undue interference to the operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the national military command center, will take considerably longer than the original construction.
The Pentagon went up in 16 months, from September 11, 1941, to Jan. 15, 1943. At one point, 15,000 construction workers were on the project, working around the clock.
The cost of construction was $49.6 million, one-20th of the estimated cost of renovation. The total cost of the original Pentagon project, including outside facilities, was $83 million.
by CNB