Granite panels coming off Thompson Center
Posted October 14, 2009 11:00 pm
Heavy granite panels that decorate pillars outside a state office building in downtown Chicago will be removed for safety reasons.
It will cost about $1 million to remove about 1,000 panels on the outside of the James R. Thompson Center. The panels weigh between 200 and 600 pounds.
The panels are coming down after one fell over the summer and an inspection showed others might be unstable too. Nobody was hurt when the panel fell.
Some of the most unstable panels have already been removed and others have been stabilized with strips of metal to hold them in place.
The panels that decorate the building's arcade are not part of its structural system.
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