DETROIT - If there are any more structural or logistical skeletons in the closets of the massive Book-Cadillac hotel - where a $180 million renovation project is ramping up - they shouldn't affect progress on returning the building to its former glory, its developer said last month.

Leading a group of journalists through the first four floors of the shelled-out hotel, John Ferchill, chairman and CEO of the Cleveland-based developer, The Ferchill Group, described the complex nature of the financing for the project, confidence in the skills of the building trades to do the job right, and projected a sense of certitude that the project will become a success.

"The Book is gradually working its way back to icon status," Ferchill said. We are proud to play a role in the preservation and renewal of one of the City's most storied assets. We respect the sentiment Detroit has for this architectural treasure."

Completed in 1924 during the city's decade-long pre-Depression skyscraper building boom, the 33-story Book-Cadillac hotel was one of the most opulent in the nation. Hosting presidents and entertainers, the hotel offered 1,200 guest rooms with grand public areas and ballrooms.

Today, those public areas are anything but grand. Low occupancy forced the hotel to close in 1984. For a few years, the building was guarded, but eventually there was no security and the public interior spaces were ruined by urban miners and the elements.

Two years ago the building trades stripped the Book-Cadillac of hazardous materials and any salvageable materials in what turned out to be a false start in the renovation of the hotel. Financing fell through until earlier this year, when the Ferchill team led a group of 22 investors in a remarkably complicated financing package to renovate the building.

The first four floors are today just a shell of masonry walls. But with the money in place, the building trades are just starting to get busy. Ferchill offered the following information about what's ahead for the Book:

• The completion of the financing package was announced on June 27. Since then construction activity has been slow - for one major reason. Ferchill said the construction team had an extremely difficult time getting their hands on a buck-hoist, or an exterior elevator. "They're all in China," he said.
• There have been no construction problems so far associated with figuring out what's going on structurally under floors and behind walls. "We haven't seen anything we didn't anticipate that will cost us money," Ferchill said. "And there's not much left to uncover."
• There will be three ballrooms in the hotel, including one that will offer sit-down dinners to 1,000 guests.
• The building, slated for completion about two years from now, will have 455 hotel rooms and 67 condominiums. The developer's confidence in the project was buoyed by a pre-sale event last month, wherein condo buyers placed deposits on 40 of the 67 condominium units, which will be placed on floors 24-29. Their cost: $280,000 to $1.5 million.
• Keeping in mind that the building's ballrooms and public areas received several major facelifts in its 60-year history, Ferchill estimated that 98 percent of the building would be restored to a previous condition. "What's here, we kept, what's gone - we really don't know," he said. He said fixtures like ornate stairwells and chandeliers can be fixed or recreated. As for the plaster, he pledged that they would try to replace "most of it, if not all of it. We have the craftsmen."

When asked for any "pleasant surprises," so far concerning the project, Ferchill said he had heard the building trades could be difficult to work with - which hasn't been the case. "The biggest problem we've had so far is getting that buck-hoist," he said.

With the 33-story Book-Cadillac a dead building and the interior elevators inoperable, getting an exterior elevator (or buck-hoist) in place has been critical to getting the project substantially under way.

When a buck-hoist was finally made available, the task was given to Darren Fisher (Elevator Constructors Local 36) and Mark Johnson (Iron Workers Local 17) of Elevator Technology to anchor it into place on the west side of the building.

"It's a really crazy design, nothing is really square and everything is custom," Johnson said. With the historic nature of the building, the iron to support the hoist had to be anchored on the interior of the building. Support tie-in iron was placed through the building's windows and anchored to floors with one-inch bolts.

"We've done a lot of buckhoists, and we know contractors want them in as soon as possible," Fisher said. "The stairs aren't very popular."

DETROIT'S Book-Cadillac hotel on Oct. 30. Photo by Don Coles, Great Lakes Aerial Photos/(313) 885-0900 owww.aerialpics.com

MOVING MATERIALS in an out of the Book-Cadillac hotel is Michael Ray of Laborers Local 334.