Renovations that have been going on for nearly two years at the Hilton Pittsburgh, Downtown, came to a halt last night as workers left and construction equipment was removed from behind the chain-link fence that still surrounded the front of the building.

Harris Mathis, chief operating officer with the Florida-based owners of the hotel, last night said there had been problems making payments to the health and pension funds of employees, but he said progress was being made and hotel employees would be receiving their paychecks today.

"We kind of got into a hole during the winter, but we've been getting caught up and, in fact, business is very good right now," Mr. Mathis said.

The hotel is owned by Shubh Hotels, out of India, and is a franchise of Hilton Corp.

"[Hilton] sets the standards, and we pay the bills," Mr. Mathis said.

But those bills haven't always been paid on time, Mr. Mathis acknowledged, as the renovations that have been going on proved to be more time-consuming and costly than anticipated.

"But it's turning out well," he said. "I'd say 99 percent of the interior work is complete."

Still, he said, work on the hotel's front exterior is behind and probably will continue into the winter.

Mr. Mathis said roughly 100 of 713 rooms remain out of service but are near completion.

The Hilton, located at the forefront of the Golden Triangle on Commonwealth Place facing Point State Park, opened in 1959 as part of the Renaissance I program that transformed Downtown from its smoky, grimy heritage into a corporate and business center.

According to the hotel's Web site, it has 27 meeting rooms capable of accommodating more than 2,000 people.

It also has more than 40,000 square feet of meeting, banquet and exhibition space and an AAA rating of three diamonds.

The Grand Ballroom is the city's largest hotel ballroom at 17,280 square feet of uninterrupted space, yet last month a huge convention -- the 1,500-delegate International Bridge Conference -- was forced to move to a bigger venue, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.