|
|
Broadway Plazza01/28/2003
Broadway Plaza on Schedule
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
By Jeffrey Pieters
The Post-Bulletin
Inch by concrete inch, Broadway Plaza keeps rising.
A major concrete pour, running well into the night Monday, raised the building's central core walls one floor, to three stories high.
Despite last week's bitterly cold weather that slowed progress by one day, work on the 27-story apartment building at the corner of Broadway and First Street Southwest in downtown Rochester is "still right on schedule," according to the construction manager.
The building is scheduled to open by spring 2004.
Innovative construction methods are helping the central core -- the building's backbone -- take form faster than could happen while using conventional methods.
Three interconnected concrete slip forms determine the shape of walls for the elevator shafts and two stairwells running up the center of the building.
Twelve hydraulic jacks, each with a 22-ton capacity, raise the forms slowly, inches at a time, as fresh concrete is poured into the top of the 4-foot high forms and the older concrete, at the bottom, sets.
Each layer of concrete takes three to four hours to set, said Don Schroeder, project superintendent for Adolfson & Peterson Inc., the job contractor.
Steel rods, called rebar, are set vertically inside the concrete columns.
The rods' thickness varies based on their position in the building, with the thicker rods lying lower in the structure.
At the building's current height, that rebar is 1 3/8 inches thick, Schroeder said.
Fifty-six tons of rebar went into the first 30 feet of the building's core walls, he said.
Concrete pads making up the floors of the building also contain steel reinforcement. Steel rods running through the floors are pulled taut, after the concrete sets, to add strength to the structure.
Work on the third floor, which will support the high-rise's fitness center and a swimming pool, contains "a lot of intricate stuff," said Evan Casey, construction manager for Rochester Development Inc., a subsidiary of Royal Management and Development Inc., the building owner.
As the building rises past the fourth floor, progress will come "quicker and quicker," at the rate of about one floor per week, Casey said.
A second crane will be installed on the northwest corner of the job site by the end of March, Casey said. The structure will be fully framed, though not fully enclosed, by December.
Finishing work inside the building will start by the time the frame is 10 stories high, Casey said.
Work on Broadway Plaza began in September. In that time, no work-related accidents have been reported, said Carl Rinta, project manager for Adolfson-Peterson.
For its builders, working on Broadway Plaza -- while no Empire State Building -- is still far more fulfilling than the average construction job. When finished, it will be Rochester's tallest building.
"It's a lot more exciting and interesting and challenging to build this thing than 20 Wal-Marts," Casey said.
|
|
 |
Website creation & hosting provided by
Corporate Web Services, Inc.
http://www.cws.net |
© Copyright 2000-2003 Construction Partnership, Inc., all rights reserved
|
|
