There was a minor little issue with the big stone balcony railings falling off the building. From what I’ve heard it’s just the start of the major construction problems that they are being very tight lipped about for obvious reasons.

http://dallas.bizjournals.com/.....tory1.html

As I saw the Vendome take to the sky several years ago as it was being constructed, I thought it was going to be the most beautiful and prominent highrise we had seen…and then I realized where the entrance to the garage was (visibly in the front)…and then I saw the tiny porte-cochere (seemed off scale and mis-matched)…and now I hear that my favorite part of the building (the balusters) are being replaced by metal…Yuck.

I bid on the ballustrade for the Vendome to a broker. I thought that the construction documents had flaws in the balustrade design and I added a simple fix to my bid. The broker took the lowest bid (not me), the manufacturer went broke finishing the job, the balustrade was made as designed. I do not know for sure, but I could guess that the balustrade could not support any outward force because the railings are on an outward radius and rely solely on the tensil strength of the mortar and glued joints of cast stone connections. A child could easily kick over a railing designed as it was. Out of all of the joints and connections, one failure would have weakened the entire balcony. I am glad that they are taking it down, someone could have been killed. The balusters do block the view as they will always when they need to meet the spacing code. The cast stone was the design but steel was the option during the bidding process. Someone made a bad decision to use cast stone as it was designed and another person made the bad decision to use the cheapest option for a vey prominent feature on the building.
The lesson should be to review the design and critique it with experts in the field of construction and engineering rather than bankers and marketing people trying to pre-sell a better looking picture and list of ammenities. Don’t blame Manhattan Construction. They were probably doing what they were told and were likely under constant pressure to keep costs down like all of us are. Few developers, bankers, and speculators understand anything more than the ever-important “cost per square foot”.