Saturday 12th October 2019, started like any other day in the city of New Orleans. The sun was out, the birds were chirping, and everyone was busy getting about their morning. Then, something happened that’d rock the city to its core.
Pedestrians walking along Canal Street looked on in horror as a nightmare began to unfold in front of their very eyes. The 190 foot-tall Hard Rock Hotel began caving in on itself. Within seconds the entire top half of the structure collapsed, as masses of concrete and metal poured down onto the street below.
But, that wasn’t part of some demolition job, nor was that an old building that was showing signs of wear and tear. In fact, that hotel was brand new. So brand new that its construction hadn’t even finished yet.
So, what caused that brand new hotel to collapse? Let's reveal how corruption, cover-ups and swimming pools, led to one of America’s most catastrophic construction disasters.
1031 Canal Street
Located in the heart of New Orleans’ historic French Quarter, is Canal Street. That bustling street is filled with theaters, shops, and even those cutely-colored streetcars. And it’s there where you’ll find 1031 Canal Street, once the site of the New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel.
But, before we take a deep dive into that hotel’s construction, let's go on a quick historical tour of that site’s storied past. In the 1930s, a Woolworth store was constructed there. Selling items for no more than 10 cents, it didn’t take long for that place to become one of New Orleans’ most popular department stores. Aside from suiting shopper’s needs, Woolworth’s also stamped its place in the history of New Orleans due to its role in the events of 1960.Why? Regrettably, during the mid 20th century, racial segregation was strictly enforced in many public spaces in the south as part of the Jim Crow laws. That included Woolworth’s on 1031 Canal Street, which refused to serve African-American customers at the lunch counter. Fed up by that awful injustice, seven local university students staged a sit-in protest at the diner.
That protest was the first organized demonstration of its kind in New Orleans. As crowds gathered to watch the protest, store officials closed and barricaded the lunch counter. Yet the student protestors wouldn’t budge. Eventually the students were arrested, but they’d already made their impact.Civil rights activists continued to hold protests and boycotts against Woolworth’s and other stores on Canal Street, helping to force through the abolishment of Jim Crow laws in 1964. Fast-forward 30 years and 1031 Canal Street was a far-cry from the busy, bustling establishment that it once was.In the mid 1990s, the Woolworth’s company was on the decline, leading to the closure of the store. For years, the building was left abandoned. But things would soon go from bad to worse for the site. In 2005, New Orleans was battered by Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the city with 127 mph winds and up to 10 inches of rainfall.
Doomed New Orleans: Hurricane Katrina | National Geographic by National Geographic As a result of the wicked weather, the now derelict store fell into extreme disrepair. Once the cornerstone of one of New Orleans’ great department stores, Woolworth’s decline along with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, left 1031 Canal Street as an ugly, unused eyesore.
For the next two years the former Woolworth’s Store remained derelict. That was until 2007, when Mohan Kailas, a local property developer and owner of real estate development company, Kailas Companies, became 1031 Canal Street’s knight in shining armor, purchasing the building and land for $3.6 million.In 2011, Kailas Companies hatched a plan on what to make of the site. They proposed constructing a 19-story building on 1031 Canal Street that’d replace the derelict Woolworth’s store. The new structure would contain 307 apartments, 486 parking spaces, a restaurant, and 38,000 square feet of retail space. There was one major roadblock, however. The building height limits for the area around Canal Street topped out at 70 feet.
And, considering Kailas’ Companies proposed structure would soar to some 190 feet, they first had to gain permission from the New Orleans council to raise the height limits. Several council members rejected the plans. They believed the high-rise would disrupt the aesthetic and architectural integrity of the historic French Quarter. After all, many of the buildings surrounding 1031 Canal Street dated back to the 19th century.Nevertheless, the council voted in favor of the planned proposal, with the majority of council members citing the project’s value for revitalizing an economically struggling area. In fairness, the building would attract hundreds of new residents to Canal Street, as well as providing parking space for the nearby theaters.So, in 2014, the Woolworth’s building was demolished. Unsurprisingly, some local residents were upset by the decision to erase one of the foundations of New Orleans’ history. Even worse, Kailas Companies failed to erect a memorial to commemorate the Woolworth’s sit-in.
It’s as if they just erased history. With the land now cleared and ready for development, you’d presume construction work would start soon after. But for years the cleared site remained dormant. Why? Well, Kailas stubbornly refused to pay the city over $383,000 worth of building fees.
Hard Rock Hotel
With no payments, 1031 Canal Street remained deserted. That was until February 2018, when Kailas Companies partnered with Hard Rock International, a global hospitality company with restaurants, casinos and hotels in more than 75 countries.
As a result of the lucrative partnership, the building fees were paid, and finally, work could begin! With Hard Rock’s input the structure would change from being an apartment block, turning into the Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans. The revamped structure would offer 62 bedroom units available for purchase.As well as that, the building would also house 350 rooms for hotel guests. Almost every room would offer city views, along with a balcony overlooking New Orleans. If that wasn’t enough, the space would also feature two ballrooms, an upscale restaurant, exclusive sky bar, and even a rooftop pool.
In February 2018, construction finally began on the Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans. After a whole 7 years since the Kailas Companies’ initial proposal, work was at last underway. Yet, despite all the years that went into planning the structure, the developers still weren’t satisfied with the direction of the project.
While the site was still in its infancy, they attempted to alter the plans, increasing the height of the building from 190 to 205 feet. That way the lofty penthouse ceilings, pool deck and rooftop bar could be implemented more easily. But on that occasion, it was a step too far or too high for the New Orleans City Council.They thought the investors were pushing too far with their plans, and rejected the proposal, instead adhering to the previously approved 190 foot height. Rather than do the sensible thing and cut back on those ambitious amenities at the top of the hotel, the design team got creative. It’d be a lethal mistake, but we’ll get to that later! As construction picked up and the structure started taking shape, another issue emerged.In September 2019, The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union representing electricians, began protesting the conditions on the construction site at 1031 Canal Street. They were upset with the fact that project leaders had been employing unlicensed and underqualified electricians. Yet, despite those hiccups, the Hard Rock Hotel neared closer and closer to completion each day.In the days before the collapse in October 2019, the structure had reached its full height of 18 stories. As well as that, the swimming pool was lifted up to the building’s roof by one of the two giant yellow cranes that surrounded the structure. Tragically though, that’d be some of the last work carried out to the Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans. Just one day after the pool was lifted onto the building’s rooftop, the structure came crashing down.
Hotel Collapse
On the morning of Saturday October 12th 2019, workers on site at the Hard Rock Hotel went about putting the finishing touches to the structure. However, at 9:12 AM, their work would be stopped in its tracks. Suddenly, the whole building trembled as a large crashing sound was heard from the summit of the structure. Turns out the northern corner of the top floor gave way.
As it crashed down, the beams holding up the floors below began to buckle. As they started to collapse it set off a domino effect, as one layer pancaked down onto the next. In all, the ten topmost floors of the hotel caved in. The collapsing concrete floors ripped through the structure, sending a large chunk of the façade tumbling down onto the nearby street. The falling debris smashed the roof of the Saenger Theater across the street.Thankfully though, no pedestrians were passing by the hotel on 1031 Canal Street when the collapse happened, otherwise I don’t think things would’ve ended too well for them. However, 112 workers were on site on the morning of the disaster. While those working on the lower floors were able to escape unscathed, the same couldn’t be said for the unfortunate souls that were stationed on the hotel’s upper levels.As the concrete flooring vanished beneath their feet, many ran towards the other side of the building before climbing down to safety. Those that had no time to run were sent crashing down with the debris. Thankfully the majority of workers managed to dodge the debris, as they jumped down floors until they eventually reached safety.
Sadly though, not everyone was so lucky. Three workers, Quinnyon Wimberley, Anthony Floyd Magrette and Jose Ponce Arreola, would never make it out of the collapse. With millions of dollars worth of damage done, multiple injuries and three mortalities, the devastating disaster rocked New Orleans. As the dust settled, city officials began to investigate how such a catastrophe could have happened, and who, or what was responsible.Unsurprisingly, the collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel made both national and international news, with people struggling to comprehend how a brand new hotel had transformed into a mess of rubble and debris. Whether it was experts in engineering, or family members personally affected by the collapse, swathes of people were looking for answers on how something like that could happen.
In a press conference after the disaster, New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell, announced that a full investigation into the collapse would get underway. But in the meantime, the immediate focus was centered around the safety of the workers and preventing any further destruction at 1031 Canal Street. Within hours, all those injured were rescued from the structure, with 18 workers being taken in ambulances to nearby hospitals.
From eye damage, to head trauma, and even a broken femur, many of the rescued workers suffered nasty injuries, with some unable to leave their hospital beds for weeks. As the injured were tended to, local police and fire departments aimed to figure out a plan of action to prevent any further collapse. After all, the upper floors of the structure were virtually hanging off, with tons of concrete and steel beams at risk of dropping down onto the street below.If that wasn’t bad enough, the city had two other pretty sizeable problems to deal with. The two colossal cranes, each more than 250 feet tall, loomed over the unstable wreck. Understandably, city officials were pretty concerned about the prospects of the colossal cranes crashing down at any point. To make matters worse, tropical storm Nestor was forecast to sweep through New Orleans just days after the collapse, bringing fierce 40 mph winds with it, which risked tipping the cranes over onto the street below.As a result, the city accelerated its plans to remove the cranes. And as you can imagine ‘removing’ two 250-foot tall cranes isn’t an easy task. Engineers hoped to set off precisely placed charges that’d fold each crane like an umbrella, before they’d fall onto the collapsed building below. While the plan went as hoped for one of the cranes, the other came crashing down onto Rampart Street.
Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans - Crane Demolition by nolafire
Still, other than a few broken windows to nearby buildings, little damage was done. Now the crane conundrum was dealt with, their efforts turned to the demolition of the collapsed hotel. Plans on how to go about demolishing the structure remained in limbo, as the city and developers disagreed over how to safely bring down such an unsteady structure. It wasn’t until May 2020, that an agreement was made to demolish the building piece by piece.That wasn’t an easy task, though, considering the structure had virtually become a deadly game of Jenga. So precarious was the mission, workers would need to send in robots that’d slowly chip away at the collapsed hotel, while dangling from platforms above. But finally, in April 2021, 18 months after the collapse, the Hard Rock Hotel site was cleared.However, for many, the clearing of the collapsed hotel came way too late. While the structure was still unstable, the intersection of the adjacent Canal and Rampart Streets remained completely closed for more than a year. That allowed crews to safely demolish the building without risking the lives of pedestrians below.Crucial as it may’ve been to public safety, the closure of the streets near to the Hard Rock Hotel crippled local businesses. The Saenger Theater found opposite was forced to shut for the next two months. Similarly, one nearby coffee shop claimed in the 8 weeks after the collapse their sales plummeted by some $11,000!
Controversy
With 3 fatalities, dozens of injuries, and major disruption to New Orleans’ French Quarter, questions were asked on how such a disaster was possible, and who was responsible for it? Some blamed the collapse on the rooftop pool, which had been installed just a day earlier, claiming it had overloaded the top of the structure.
Still, if a swimming pool is enough to take down a 190 foot hotel, that says more about the building’s flimsy structure, rather than the pool itself. For many, Mohan Kailas, the man whose idea it was to build a high-rise on 1031 Canal Street in the first place, was to blame.
In fact, that wouldn’t be the first controversy involving the Kailas family. In 2013, two years after Mohan purchased 1031 Canal Street, his son, and co-member of Kailas Companies, was sentenced to 30 months in jail. His crime was theft of public funds from a government program that funded homeowners affected by Hurricane Katrina.On top of that, investigative reporters uncovered almost $70,000 in campaign donations from Mohan to New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell, as well as over $20,000 of donations to city council members. No wonder those council members approved Kailas’s humungous high-rise. But Kailas isn’t the only one in the wrong. When the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, released their report on the hotel collapse in April 2020, Kailas wasn’t mentioned.Instead, the report cited Heaslip Engineering, Citadel Builders, Hub Steel, as well as 8 other firms for various safety and health violations at the construction site, and proposed fining the companies a combined sum exceeding $315,000. The report put the bulk of the blame on Heaslip Engineering, the firm responsible for the hotel’s structural design. After all, the OSHA report cited major design flaws as a key contributor to the collapse.So, what were those fatal flaws? As previously mentioned, the revamped proposal would see the Hard Rock Hotel’s upper floors fitted with lofty penthouse ceilings, a pool deck, and rooftop bar. To cram all those goodies in, the developers went to the city council, requesting if the hotel height limit could be increased again, this time from 190 feet to 205 feet. But the council, who were already unsure about the 190 foot height, rejected the proposal.However, with the developers keen to load the Hard Rock Hotel with fancy features, they found a woeful workaround. They replaced the 21 inch supporting steel beams on the 16th and 17th floor with much thinner 10 inch thick beams. Though 11 inches of clearance were gained per floor, the structure of those upper floors was made much weaker.
But that wasn’t the building’s only problem. Metal decking sheets, used in the construction of concrete floor slabs, were originally meant to be around 18 gauge, or 0.06 inches thick. However, it was decided, without approval of the city, that the sheets would be changed to a much thinner 22 gauge, or 0.03 inch thickness. Though that made the cost of the material much cheaper, they were also far weaker.Still, the 16th and 17th floors could be held securely in place if more steel columns were added. Instead of the originally planned 11 columns, expert engineers believe modified plans should’ve included at least 24 columns to make up for the thinner beams and metal decking. So, how many were on the 16th floor? As you’ve probably guessed by now, it isn’t going to be 24. Instead, just 12 columns were put in place!That’s right, somehow the engineers thought it’d be safe enough to add just one additional column, despite using much thinner steel beams and metal sheets than were originally intended. If that wasn’t bad enough, like the beams running horizontally under the floors, these columns were much smaller than what was in the original plans.All 12 of the columns were 4 inches thinner and had a lower load capacity than the original columns in the building blueprint. Structural engineer, Michael Bradbury, calculated that the new, smaller columns had just 1/8th of the stiffness of the columns originally proposed. No wonder those top floors crumbled like a sand castle!Shamefully though, the design flaws were just one part of many major mistakes in the construction of the Hard Rock Hotel. In the months after the collapse, local media outlets obtained the vehicle GPS records of building inspectors that were working on-site. Or, that’s at least what they said they were doing! When the inspectors claimed to be at the construction site, their vehicle GPS data actually showed they were nowhere near the building at the time.
That means they falsified reports, and approved critical aspects of the construction despite not overseeing any of it. But it gets worse! Another building inspector not only didn’t turn up to the site to oversee construction, they even accepted $65,000 in bribes from people seeking favorable inspection reports. How do those people sleep at night?In fairness to the workers, many of them did raise concern with what was going on at the construction site. Brad Morrow, a supervisor who worked on the project for Hub Steel, the steel fabricator for Hard Rock Hotel, took hundreds of photos of building practices that didn’t look right to him.
Likewise, a local contractor recorded a video days before the collapse, showing a concrete slab sagging so much that the supporting shoring jacks beneath it were bending. Another worker, Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, repeatedly raised dangerous lapses in construction safety to his supervisors, but he was always told to ‘just get on with his work’.In the days after the collapse, Palma initiated a lawsuit against the developers of the project and their construction firms. Palma accused them of using substandard materials and inadequate underpinnings to shore up the concrete floors. Just days after the accident, while out on a fishing trip, seemingly to try and forget about the awful ordeal, Palma was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as he lacked identification documents.
Palma emigrated over to New Orleans from Honduras way back in 1999, and never before had he been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Though he was never legally authorized to work in the U.S, the timing and circumstances of his arrest raised suspicions among his lawyers and supporters. They believed his detainment was linked to his complaints surrounding the hotel collapse.
Despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official saying there was no link between Palma’s lawsuit and his deportation, it seems way too coincidental to have just happened by chance, don’t you think? Even still, in November 2019, Palma was deported back to his native Honduras, and with that, a key witness and voice of the workers of the Hard Rock Hotel was silenced. Four years after Palma’s controversial deportation, a verdict was finally reached on the Hard Rock Hotel collapse.If you’re hoping for some happily-ever-after story, where justice was served, sorry to disappoint. Instead, a grand jury elected not to charge anyone with a crime. Ultimately, the jury came to the verdict that there wasn’t enough evidence to meet the threshold for a criminal case. Think of that, a new building collapsed, taking the lives of three men, and injuring many more, and not one person was even held accountable!You’d presume the catastrophic collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel would put developers off building anything on the site of 1031 Canal Street in the future. But no. Clearly, Mohan Kailas hadn’t learnt his lesson. 20 months after the disaster, in June 2021, Kailas put plans forward to build a new hotel on the cleared property.Thankfully this time, the City Council saw some sense, rejecting Kailas’ request. Currently the site on 1031 Canal Street remains cleared, but people are looking to change that. In November 2024, city council members voted unanimously in favor of the move to grant the site a historical landmark designation. That would give the city more control over what happens to 1031 Canal Street, allowing them to construct a permanent memorial on the site, something various council members have proposed. Though the Hard Rock Hotel is no longer standing, its legacy is still very much present today. The collapse on 1031 Canal Street goes to show how corruption, greed and failure to follow the rules only lead to one thing, total disaster! Who knew one hotel could cause so much controversy?
I hope you were amazed at this investigation about the New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel collapse. Thanks for reading.
