Las Olas City Centre – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Precaster: Gate Precast Company
Las Olas City Centre is the latest mixed-use office and retail project located on Las Olas Boulevard in the center city of downtown Fort Lauderdale. This project advances the trend toward densification and celebration of the urban experience as it has been conceived for downtown Fort Lauderdale. The entire office and parking components of this mixed-use project rest on a 22’-0” high retail base that activates all four facades of the project at the level of the downtown pedestrian. Proposed components of the retail development include a major downtown banking facility, a high profile jeweler, space for additional retailers, and a new downtown restaurant with outdoor dining situated in the project’s exterior court/plaza.“Early in the design process, we were able to sit down with the precaster and devise a cost-effective panelization system for the project while still maintaining the integrity of the design,” said Steve Smith of Cooper Carry in Atlanta, Ga. Repetition and a cost-effective detail that precasters estimators designed to reduce the piece count made the exterior skin more affordable. This detail involved combining the infill spandrels and the vertical columns, which resulted in panels averaging 100 square feet. Column covers were notched, allowing the spandrels to run behind them, which cut the amount of pieces by one third. Sequentially cast panels were also used to reduce the amount of pieces.“Precast pricing is determined by the size of the pieces and repetition. The more pieces a project has, the more labor hours it takes to engineer, cast, strip, load, deliver and erect,” said Dan Wiggins, senior estimator at Gate Precast Company in Monroeville, Ala. “By minimizing the number of pieces, we were able to shorten the erection of the precast duration. This allowed quicker installation of the glass, which shortened the dry-in time,” added Dean Gwin, Gate Precast Company’s Vice President of Marketing and Sales. Key challenges that arose in erection, according to Project Manager Randy Zerra, were erecting at night and coordination of window embeds. Unlike other trades, precast is an independent trade that can be erected in any weather, or any time of the day. Pre-Con Construction of Tampa, Fla., erected over 2,000 pieces of precast.“The structure has a distinctive, Gothic style from the parapet wall up. No other building in Ft. Lauderdale has this look,” Zerra said.
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