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Work starts on faulty windows at Cloisters
By SHARON L. BOND
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- It will take about eight months, but work has started to replace all 500 windows in the Cloisters condominium complex on Beach Drive. It has been more than a year since leaks were discovered in the luxury high rise, which was the first of three to be built in the rejuvenated downtown. Randy Wedding, an architect and one of four partners who developed the Cloisters, said it would take about a week per unit, maybe a little less, to replace the windows. The complex has 32 units. The new windows cost about half a million dollars, Wedding said. Added to that is the cost of labor and any repair work that must be done when the original windows are taken out. When the leaks were discovered, Wedding said that the Cloisters' contractor, Metric Constructors, would pay for replacing the windows. Thursday he said the company was the subject of litigation about the windows. In the meantime, Litchfield Financial Corp., the complex's lender, will pay the bill. Efforts to reach Metric were not successful. Wedding said it took so long to get the project going because condominium owners had to agree on the type of replacement windows. "We tried to get everyone involved to agree upon a selection for the replacement. The human dynamics of that were somewhat overwhelming," he said. A committee was formed to come up with the final selection. Wedding said the building will not look that much different from the outside once the new windows are in. They will be the same colors as the faulty ones. Only two of the 32 units at the Cloisters are still for sale. Construction of the complex started a condominium boom downtown. The Florencia went up a few doors down on Beach Drive. And Vinoy Place still is under construction just a few blocks away.
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