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“Yeah, sure.”
Austin passed one can to Lane, opening his just as his phone rang.
He took a quick sip, then answered the call. “Hey, Kenny. I’m showing Willie Lane around the plant.” He paused to listen, then said, “Yeah, he just said he was impressed. Look, I’ll call you back in a bit.”
He broke off the call, and said, “Benson said to give you his regards.”
As they stepped from the vehicle and walked toward the main door, Lane saw at the far end of the building that there were rows containing dozens upon dozens of multicolored, forty-foot-long metal boxes stacked ten high. He recognized them as shipping containers; he had seen them lined up in similar fashion on the docks at the port in Philadelphia.
“As you saw this morning,” Austin said, “the iron framework of the condo is only half finished. When it’s finally complete, that’s when all this comes into play.”
Austin pointed toward the back of the building.
“At that end,” he said, “the trucks deliver the intermodal containers that come off the freighters at the Port of Miami. The containers have all the building materials—metal framing, sinks, toilets, floor tiles, whatever—that we have fabricated in China. The pieces are fed to the assembly line down at that end of the building and come out this end of the building as complete units.”
He started walking toward the far front of the building, gesturing for Lane to follow. After a bit, Lane had a better view of the adjacent property. It was maybe ten acres, surrounded by chain-link fence, that contained giant rectangular-shaped pods stacked four high. He guessed each was twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and twelve feet high. They were individually shrink-wrapped, one section of what had to be at least fifty pods in blue plastic sheeting, the other section in yellow. There were large, four-digit numbers stenciled in white on their sides. Against the nearest fence line were a half dozen flatbed trailers, each with one of the shrink-wrapped pods strapped to it.
“So,” Lane said, “what exactly are all these mysterious plastic-covered things?”
“The blue ones are kitchens and the yellow ones bathrooms.”
“You mean, like, portable kitchens and toilets?”
“They’re modular units,” Austin said, nodding. He pointed at the trailers. “We load them on the trailers and truck them to the construction site, where we cut that shrink-wrap off and hoist them into place on each floor with the crane. Those numbers on the plastic are the numbers of the condos they’re going in.”
“Portable kitchens,” Lane said again, his tone making it clear he still did not quite comprehend it all.
“Portable for now,” Austin said, turning to look at Lane, “but not after they’re slid into place and installed. See, the kitchens and bathrooms are all built as modules.” He gestured toward the manufacturing plant. “They’re done on the assembly line here. It’s a helluva lot easier, and more efficient, to have the materials in bulk here than to bring the pieces on-site and send them piece by piece up into the building, where workers have to put it all together in each separate unit. That old way is highly inefficient.”
“So these finished modules go into the buildings sort of like those plastic building blocks that kids snap together?”
“Yeah. You ever notice how high-rise condos and apartments and hotels and the like all have pretty much the same thing on every floor? The bathrooms and kitchens, for example, are all situated in the same place on a floor plan so that the water lines all run in the same area and the sewer lines drain straight down.”
“How about that?” Lane said, glancing back at the stacked boxes. “I never really thought about it, but they really are in the same place on every floor.”
“So after we put them in place, we hook up the plumbing and electrical to the buildings and we’re done. Same goes for the exterior of a building. The panels are fabricated off-site, trucked in, hoisted into place. We use electric cranes so we don’t violate the city’s nighttime noise ordinances and can work past the typical eight P.M. cutoff. That gets the building finished in a fraction of the time—the modular units can be built even before the building’s steel framework goes up. Even better is the labor: there’s plenty of craftsmen here from Central America and Cuba looking for steady work, so there’s no threat of walkouts. We can run three eight-hour shifts forever.” He nodded toward the building. “C’mon, I’ll show you the assembly line.”
Willie Lane nodded thoughtfully as they began walking.
“This is really amazing stuff,” he said, glancing back at the field of blue and yellow modules. “Tell me again what’s the initial investment for getting in one of these funds?”
John T. Austin took a big swallow of his beer, then grinned.
“I think we can work out something for the next mayor of Philly.”
[ FIVE ]
The tractor-trailer rig with the blue-shrink-wrapped modular unit disappeared inside the construction fencing as John Austin approached the front passenger door of Willie Lane’s Mercedes SUV. Behind him, an unwrapped bathroom unit, hanging from the end of the crane’s cable, ascended.
After Lane pushed the master switch that unlocked the car, he noticed that Austin used his left hand to open the door and then, once inside, to pull the door shut.
He must’ve really messed up his right arm, he thought.
“How’s it going, Willie?” Austin said.
“Jesus, you look like you got the shit beat out of you, Johnny,” Lane said, his gravel voice sounding rougher than usual. “You okay?”
“It feels like I did. Thanks for asking. And, yeah, except for this nasty bruise and a hairline fracture to my arm, I’ll survive, I guess.”
