Construction takes off at PDX
A Hoffman airport project manager is right at home building the Port of Portland’s new headquarters, one of a half-dozen projects there in coming years
Daily Journal of Commerce
POSTED: 06:00 AM PST Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BY LIBBY TUCKER
Derrick Beneville has spent seven of his 21 years with Hoffman Construction Co. building and tearing things down at Portland International Airport. The project manager helped build the airport’s MAX light-rail station and was part of a crew that demolished the old control tower to make way for Concourse C, which he also helped build.
“I’ve been with the company longer than I’ve been married to my wife,” Beneville jokes. “Working at the airport is like coming home.”
Now Beneville is overseeing Hoffman’s latest project at PDX, a second parking garage and office tower that the Port of Portland in 2010 will call home.
The port in April again called on long-time partner Hoffman, signing the company for the $247 million project without a competitive bidding process. When it’s finished, the 500-stall long-term parking garage and 194,000-square-foot port headquarters will sit a mere 30 feet east of the airport’s existing garage, nestled between its two four-story helix-shaped off-ramps.
“This job takes a lot of resources,” Steve Johnson, a port spokesman, said. “And it’s not just anybody who can do that.”
Planning for pedestrian and car traffic at the site, alone, took six months. But the first big challenge came last month when subcontractor Weitman Excavation of Tualatin started laying sewer and water lines to the site, trenching through a nearby parking lot while a car-washing business for rental companies stayed open.
The contractor squeezed a backhoe and a dump truck into a 40-foot space while newly scrubbed cars were directed around the digging and into the existing parking garage. The scene looked a lot like heavy construction equipment playing a real-life version of the old video game “Frogger.”
“And the fun has just begun,” Beneville said. The next step is building a new ramp for the rental cars before demolishing the old one.
The heavy work begins next week, though, when the crew begins driving 43 miles of steel pile into the sandy soil under PDX, which sits almost even with the Columbia River. Drilling will also make way for 300 geothermal wells that will heat and cool the port’s offices and help achieve a U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating.
De-watering pumps will work full-time sucking ground water from the site like a straw to keep the soil from filling in like quicksand.
Workers must also avoid hitting heating and electrical pipes running from the airport’s central energy station through the heart of the construction site.
And one huge factor is the Federal Aviation Administration control tower, which looms over the east end of the construction site and limits the height within which the contractor can work. A tower crane would block the FAA’s radar, which is used in bad weather and emergencies, so the contractor will get creative when work begins on the headquarters building in 2009.
Instead of a tower crane with a fixed boom, Hoffman will put a hydraulic crane on top of the newly built parking garage. The boom can be lowered when the tower needs to make radio contact.
But for now, the site isn’t much more than a dirt lot, and Beneville’s work is just getting started.
“For the first eight years with Hoffman, I moved around to six different places,” he said. “That’s why the port’s my home. My family is seven years in the same place. My daughter’s going to graduate high school here.”
<b>A host of work at PDX</b>
Hundreds of millions of dollars of construction at Portland International Airport will continue through the decade.
• The port last week wrapped up its PDX bicycle and pedestrian plan with the opening of a <b>$500,000</b> bike and pedestrian trail running a half-mile between Marine Drive and Northeast Frontage Road.
• Kodiak Pacific recently completed the second phase of the port’s Airport Way realignment for <b>$6.8 million.</b>
• The port last month awarded Hoffman Construction Co. a <b>$101.3 million</b> contract to install new baggage screening machines in 65,000 square feet of the airport terminal.
• Last month Hoffman started work on the <b>$247 million</b> second parking garage and Port of Portland headquarters.
• The port in 2008 will award a contract to add a lane in each direction to Airport Way from the airport to 82nd Avenue.
• The port will expand its de-icing system.
• In January the port will begin an airfield study for the possible extension of its north runway.
http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDeta...ing-the-Port-o
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). I flew from there a couple weeks ago, and walked around a bit before my flight, and noticed the D concourse is undergoing big renovations. It was pretty dead-feeling when I walked through, but just b/c all the concession areas are being torn-up and replaced with new retailers. It seemed as though they are replicating some of the design of the C concourse. Should be nice, and I think it's almost done. Kind of amazing, a fairly new terminal from the 90's (D concourse) has already become outdated -- but PDX is an award-winning airport partly b/c they are so great about maintaning an inviting atmosphere.
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