The Subway 'hotel' was installed in the center of the Freedom Tower construction site. (Jennifer Glickel/DNAinfo)By Jennifer Glickel and Jon Schuppe
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
FINANCIAL DISTRICT — Five stories above Ground Zero, ironworkers are fastening together nine steel trailers that will become a floating Subway restaurant, rising as each new floor of the Freedom Tower is completed.
The last of those 15-foot-long trailers, painted yellow and emblazoned with the Subway logo and an American flag, was hoisted on to the site Wednesday.
When the restaurant opens in late January it will include a full-service kitchen, a dining area and a composting container that will recycle trash and heat waste water into steam.
Shop owner Richard Schragger, who owns four other Subway franchises in Manhattan, all on terra firma, isn't quite sure what to expect.
He's still figuring out how to coordinate the delivery of supplies, which will be lifted to his one-of-a-kind restaurant by crane. His employees will need to pass background checks and take safety courses. And his potential customers will be limited to construction workers.
"When I first heard about the project, it sounded really exciting," he said. "I was interested from the start."
Schragger was recommended by a Subway development team that was working with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owns the site. The steelworkers needed a place to spend their lunch breaks that wouldn't require them taking slow elevators up and down.
"He was handpicked by us," Joe Allegretti, a Subway spokesman, said of Schragger. "He presents himself well, has good standing with the company and he runs lean operations with good customer service."
The restaurant will be part of a 'hotel' of trailers that also includes bathrooms, lockers and offices. Every couple of weeks, as each floor of the Freedom Tower is completed, the hotel will be hydraulically lifted to the next level.
When the tower is finished, sometime about three years from now, it will stand 105 stories tall. At the top, Schragger’s restaurant will be disassembled and lowered by crane, piece by piece, back to ground level.
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