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Crown Status and more details
FYI: This article is from the Mobile Register.
Tower tiara
Steel tubing crown with 80-foot spire to top off RSA building over next three months; weather permitting, project may wrap up by year's end
Sunday, January 29, 2006
By KATHY JUMPER
Real Estate Editor
Alabama's future tallest building will be crowned with 743 tons of steel and an 80-foot spire in the next three months, and if Mother Nature cooperates, the 35-story RSA Battle House Tower could be complete by the end of the year.
"If it were a perfect world, we'd like to think we'd be substantially finished in 2006," said Ron Blount, project director for the Retirement Systems of Alabama's $162 million office tower and the adjacent 250-room Battle House Hotel on Royal Street.
"But we've had four hurricanes and two tropical storms" during the three years of construction, Blount said this past week. "This has been the worst weather nightmare of my 38-year career."
Severe weather has required the evacuation of the 600 workers at RSA's construction site at Water and Dauphin streets several times in the past three years, he said. But the project was hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina last August. The hurricane's storm surge flooded part of downtown Mobile and caused $12 million to $16 million worth of damage to the RSA site -- much of it saltwater damage to materials and equipment that had to be replaced.
Air conditioning and heating units had been shut down on the entire project since Katrina, but were restored last week, Blount said. The last replacement part for the elevators will be delivered in mid-February.
The circa 1909 hotel, which initially had been scheduled to open in August as a Marriott Renaissance Hotel, may now have a "soft" opening by the end of the year, according to Blount.
Work on the hotel rooms in the Battle House and the 745-foot office tower is moving along well, according to John White-Spunner of White-Spunner Construction of Mobile, the contractor for the interior finishes to the hotel and the parking deck. The first seven floors of the tower will have some hotel rooms and conference rooms. Work is also under way on the hotel ballrooms and restoring the historic plaster work in the lobby and public rooms.
Construction on a 1,000-space parking deck and spa building on St. Francis Street should start in three to four weeks, he said.
Officials with Archer Western Contractors, the firm building the core and shell of the tower, have spent several months planning the installation of the tower's crown, which consists of more than a mile of carbon steel tubing.
Iron workers will spend three to four months putting the crown together, according to Pete Faulkner, project manager for Archer Western of Atlanta. "It's equivalent to putting a 12-story building on top of the existing concrete structure, it's so high and there's so much of it."
The 260-foot crown and spire will be installed on top of the tower's 41st floor.
The crown comes in 12 pieces, has a total height of 180 feet and includes 743 tons of steel, according to Blount. The pieces were manufactured in Chattanooga, Tenn., and trucked here.
The 80-foot spire will be installed, via helicopter, on top of the crown.
The interior of the crown structure will be used for maintenance and building operations. Only the building's first 35 floors are designed to be occupied by tenants
Faulkner said that this is the first time he's worked on a high-rise building that featured a huge crown. "But that's what makes the building so unique," he said. "It's a cool-looking building."
Finishing the tower by the end of the year "is a realistic projection," barring another hurricane, Faulkner said. "Our staff has been planning so hard to take this building to the next step and it's starting to pay off."
Furnishings and equipment for the interior of the building such as carpet, bath fixtures and furniture have been purchased and are stored in a warehouse waiting to be installed, according to Blount.
When construction on the tower started in October 2002, RSA officials had hoped to have the tower and hotel open in three years.
"You have to give the people who do the work credit," for the progress, Blount said. "You hate for a project to be late; it's not good for the contractor or the owner. But these hurricanes were acts of God, and there's nothing you can do."
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