City Hall gets its new carpet
“Okuni” carpeting for agency and City Council offices, plus new hardwood floors in highly trafficked parts of City Hall
Above: The new chocolate-brown carpeting will replace carpeting that is considered worn and a safety hazard. This installation was in a hallway used by City Council staff.
Work is underway to re-carpet portions of City Hall under a $750,000 contract awarded by the Board of Estimates last April.
The Brew looked into the price and found it to be more than double the cost of typical commercial carpet installations.
The Department of General Services said the age of City Hall was one reason for the higher price. Another was the disposal costs for the old flooring, and a third was the requirement that installation be done on weekends and after-hours so as not to disrupt City Hall’s routine operations.
Nearly all of the chocolate-brown “okuni” carpeting is being installed in the offices of city agencies and the offices of City Council members and staff.
The handsome decorative carpeting in the Mayor’s Office and the City Council chambers, including the Curran Conference Room, will not be touched, according to General Services director Steve Sharkey.
The carpet, installed by Columbia-based CB Flooring, has yet to be laid in the second-floor Hyman Pressman Room used by the Liquor Board and Board of Estimates for public hearings.
As part of the contract, the city plans to install $50,000 worth of hardwood floors in highly trafficked areas of the building.
About half of the carpeting will replace carpets installed when City Hall was refurbished in the late 1970s. The rest was laid about 12 years ago but “has not held up well,” Sharkey said.