Lofty Los Angeles office tower launched with record concrete pour
Crews
pour concrete to lay the foundation for the New Wilshire Grand building
in a record attempt for the largest continuous concrete pour in
history, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014, in downtown Los Angeles. (AP
Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES
(Reuters) - Construction workers in downtown Los Angeles finished laying
the foundation on Sunday for a planned 73-story skyscraper expected to
be the tallest west of the Mississippi River as they completed the
world's largest continuous pour of concrete.
The
21,200 cubic yards of concrete weighing some 84 million pounds (38,200
metric tons) was hauled to the site by a fleet of over 200 trucks making
a total of 2,120 trips in a continuous 19-hour operation ending at
11:30 a.m. on Sunday, said project spokesman Sean Rossall.
The
foundation is expected to take two weeks to completely harden, during
which cool water will be pumped through a network of tubes embedded in
the massive slab to absorb heat as the concrete cures.
The
New Wilshire Grand tower, designed to include 900 luxury hotel rooms,
400,000 square feet (37,200 square meters) of offices, plus retail
space, is slated to be completed in late 2016 and open in early 2017,
Rossall said.
The $1 billion project is being developed by Korean
Airlines, which also owned the old Wilshire Grand building that was
demolished to make room for the new tower.
The
marathon effort to lay its foundation was certified by the Guinness
World Records as the largest continuous pour of concrete ever by volume,
surpassing by just 200 cubic yards the previous record set at the
Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas, according to Michael Empric, the
Guinness adjudicator for Sunday's event.
The Venetian, he said, was completed in 1999.Rising 73 stories into the Los Angeles skyline, the New Grand Wilshire tower will measure 1,100 feet (335 meters) high, including a spire affixed to the top of the building, in a design that developers boast will make it the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
That distinction currently belongs to the U.S. Bank Tower, located a few blocks away in downtown Los Angeles.
Michael
Marchesano, general superintendent for Turner Construction, the general
contractor for the Grand Wilshire project, said he was most proud that
no one was injured during the complex, round-the-clock concrete pour.
"With
that many workers and that many trucks, it can be very dangerous if you
don't have a plan in place, but we really had a team effort and a
plan," he said.
The continuous
pour for the building's foundation was a construction design
characteristic called for by the project's structural engineers, he
said.
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