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As Apple employees prepare to move in to their new headquarters, one documentarian is looking back over the past year to show what it took to get them there.

Documentarian Matthew Roberts on Sunday published his latest drone video, recapping progress for the construction of Apple Parkthe official name of Apple's new headquartersover the last 12 months. The video focuses in part on the company's main, ring-shaped building, where most of the 12,000 Apple ( aapl ) employees slated to work there will find their offices. In June, the building, which has been called the "spaceship" because of its design, still didn't have a roof and construction crews were working feverishly to gets solar panels up there.

As the months wore on, however, construction crews made significant progress, and most of the solar panels were sitting atop the building by the end of the year. Now it appears to be nearly completed, if it's not done already.

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Apple Park is the brainchild of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and has been under construction in Cupertino, Calif. for the last several years . In addition to the main, 2.8-million-square-foot building, it will have a 100,000-square-foot fitness center, numerous restaurants, and a research-and-development facility, among other facilities. When it's complete, Apple Park will also be surrounded by 9,000 trees, an orchard, a meadow, and a pond. It'll also be completely powered by renewable energy.

After the main building, Roberts took viewers on a tour of a new auditorium Apple has planned, which will be known as the Steve Jobs Theater. However, unlike the main office building, the auditorium's construction progress has been slower, and the 1,000-seat facility is still in full-on construction mode.

Apple Park's massive underground parking tunnel also appears to be under construction, but coming along nicely over the last year. The research-and-development facility, however, is fully completed.

Apple employees are slated to start moving into Apple Park soon. Apple has said that it will likely take six months to move employees into the facility.

Excerpt from:
Watch Apple Park's Construction Progress Over the Last Year - Fortune

By Victoria Mitchell

Elected officials are hopeful that a Class A office building in the central business district will attract daytime foot traffic to support existing downtown businesses. (Rendering by Krieger Klatt Architects; provided by the city of Royal Oak)

Posted May 15, 2017

click to enlarge

Some business owners are concerned that the building would eliminate handicapped parking spots and hinder back-door access to the businesses. (Photo by Victoria Mitchell)

ROYAL OAK Visions of a city center development including nearly $100 million in buildings and a central park on municipal property took a step toward reality when site plans for a private office building received a green light last week.

On May 9, the Planning Commission unanimously approved a conditional site plan and a special use permit for the Central Park Development Groups six-story office building.

Mike Leinweber, Boji Group vice president of construction services, said the Class A office building a building with the highest quality of construction would include a two-story lobby, offices, retail, retail-related business services, a market/restaurant with an outdoor patio, and a private rooftop terrace.

We are very proud of this building, Leinweber said. We do think that it is a significant step forward in the city, achieving many of the goals in the 2014 vision of some of the things that are needed in the downtown new office space, Class A type of offices. It certainly is a Class A building.

The City Commission established a goal of securing 180,000 square feet of Class A office space by 2020 to generate daytime foot traffic in the downtown.

The building would stand where the Williams Street parking lot exists now in front of City Hall. The structure would span from Second to Third streets to the north and south, and where the current City Hall stands now west to the alley behind existing Main Street businesses like Mr. Bs Pub and Brueggers Bagels & Cafe.

The front of the building would face the current City Hall. For more than a year, the City Commission has been discussing plans to tear down the existing City Hall and Police Department buildings and to replace them with a park. Other plans under consideration include a multistory parking deck and a new City Hall and Police Department.

The development of this building is contingent upon the citys execution of its overall development for the district, and there are elements in that that are important for this building, including the parking deck, Leinweber said.

Royal Oak Director of Community Development Timothy Thwing said plans are in the works.

At some point, the Planning Commission will see potentially the plans for a parking deck, the plans for a City Hall building, as well as a police station, Thwing said. Probably the last thing you will see is the park itself.

The special use permit approved during the meeting applies to the restaurant and outdoor patio that would be on the first floor of the development.

The proposed office building would replace 111 existing parking spaces in the surface lot. Proposed developments within the central business district are exempt from including and providing parking spaces in their plans.

The office building plans show eight private spaces for building tenants at the rear of the building, which would abut the Main Street alleyway. The plans also show that the development is taking 10 feet of the existing 30-foot-wide alleyway.

Thwing said a typical alley in the city is about 20 feet.

The alleyway was a subject of contention for a handful of speakers who came before the Planning Commission during the public hearing portion of the meeting.

Attorney Chris Martella, from Kemp Klein Law Firm, said he represents some of the adjacent property owners to the south of the proposed development.

We cannot look at this in a vacuum, Martella said. He added it is a beautiful project, but his clients have concerns with their business access and handicapped parking accessibility.

The issue of handicapped parking is a concern, Martella said. The existing buildings in the area use the flat lots as both access points and handicapped parking.

Martell said he is concerned that handicapped parking would be moved to the proposed northern parking structure that would abut 11 Mile Road.

Mr. Bs Pub owner John Prepolec said he is concerned about parking for his handicapped customers, along with loss of business that he feels will result from losing the parking lot. He said 65 to 70 percent of his customers use the back door as their entranceway because of the adjacent parking lot.

Its interesting they call it an alleyway, but truthfully, its an entrance, Prepolec said.

His sentiments were echoed by Michael Nash, who owns six buildings on the east side of Main Street that all back up to the existing city parking lot.

This project will have a devastating effect not only on those six buildings, those six tenants, but it will metastasize throughout Main Street, he said.

City Commissioner Sharlan Douglas who also sits on the Planning Commission said she was left shaking her head by those commenting.

For many, many years, downtown restaurants and retailers have been begging, clamoring for daytime tenants, for office workers and people to eat in their restaurants and shop in their stores, and this is a development which 700 people, 20 working days per month, 12 months a year, could generate 168,000 potential lunches in Royal Oak.

Yes, I realize that there are going to be restaraunts that no longer have parking right outside their door, but we are delivering customers that our downtown businesses want, and we are providing parking to accommodate them, she said.

Ron Boji, president of Boji Group and partner in the Central Park Development Group, said the development is expected to house about 700 people at full capacity.

Planning Commission Chairwoman Anne Vaara said that not only would the new office building deliver lunch traffic, but it would also bring catering, dinner and breakfast customers, and opportunities for large-scale meeting spaces.

So there is a tremendous opportunity for growth of the restaurant and retail business in Royal Oak because of this, she said.

The property sale to the Central Park Development Group for the city-owned lot has not been executed.

About the author

Staff Writer Victoria Mitchell covers Royal Oak and Clawson along with Royal Oak and Clawson school districts. Mitchell has worked for C & G Newspapers since 2014 and attended the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Wayne State University. She is a Michigan Press Association award-winner for writing, design and general excellence and in her spare time enjoys volunteering with the Girl Scouts of America.

Full bio and more articles by this reporter

For more local news coverage, see the following newspaper:

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Commission approves plan for high-end office building - C&G Newspapers

Dear Call Box: I drive down Atlantic Boulevard every day and noticed that there has been some construction activity at the site of the two office buildings that burned. They were adjacent to Fire Station 12.

L.E., Southside

Dear L.E.: The first of the two one-story office buildings at 3434 Atlantic Blvd. burned in February 2013 and was ruled accidental. The second fire in January 2015 destroyed the building in back of it. Cause of the second fire was believed to be arson, according to Kayla Anderson, spokeswoman for the state Fire Marshals Office.

Physician Rene Pulido bought the property and will use it for medical office buildings, said Tom Shrout, president of The Shrout Companies, which is doing the work. Pulido revised the permit which had been issued to rebuild the 5,200-square-foot building that burned in 2013.

Construction had started on the building, which faces Atlantic, but was halted until truss drawings from the engineer can be completed, Shrout said. Then they will be submitted to the city for approval, and construction will resume, he said. He expects that to happen in mid-July with a target completion date of the end of the year. Then work can start on the second building, Shout said.

There was a lot of engineering work that had to be done to see of some of the original framework and foundation could be used. Some could and some not, Shrout said.

Pulido owns other clinics and doctors offices in the 2000 block of Atlantic.

Dear Call Box: I have discovered some water spots on the ceiling of the living room and garage in my two-story home. I am 70 years old and physically not able to get up the attic and crawling inside the rafters to look for the source of the water damage. I hope you can advise me as to whom to call to make this inspection, be it a plumber, painter or contractor to determine where the leak is located.

T.T., Jacksonville

Dear T.T.: We called Rolland Reash Plumbing Co. to find the answer to your question. Kyle Conway, office supervisor, said plumbers investigate leaks all the time and will be able to tell you the origin of the leak. You can find a long list by googling plumbers.

Dear Call Box: Can you tell me who or what Belfort Road was named after?

J.M., Riverside-Avondale

Dear J.M.: We thought this would be an easy question, but thats where we were mistaken. We searched our archives, contacted a historical society and called a prominent developer, but none knew the origin. So were throwing it out to the readers, who recently came through on a similar question.

Update: A month after we wrote about Bernard Berney, whose famed Man in Green restaurant was featured in Ripleys Believe It or Not column, readers continue their fascination with the downtown icon. Carolyn Adams said that her mother-in-law, Kathleen McClure, was a marathon dancer during the depression who often talked about coming to Jacksonville and dancing in the all-green restaurant with an owner who dressed in green. Her father-in-law, Ralph Waldo Wally Adams, was the emcee, and the couple got married on one of their dancing trips around the country.

Her mother-in-law won $100 for every 24 hours on her feet with only a 10-minute break every hour. The most she ever won was $400 or $500.

Submit questions by calling (904) 359-4622 or mailing to Call Box, P.O. Box 1949, Jacksonville, FL 32231. Please include contact information. If you have a picture to offer with your question, feel free to send it.

Sandy Strickland: (904) 359-4128

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Call Box: Medical office building rising from the ashes - Florida Times-Union

In addition to nearly a million square feet of office space the city of Menlo Park has authorized Facebook to build, the company has indicated it plans to lease the new eight-story office building under construction by the Bohannon Companies at 100 Independence Drive in eastern Menlo Park.

We have agreed to terms to a building lease at Menlo Gateway in Menlo Park, CA from Bohannon Development Company and are in the process of finalizing details, said John Tenanes, Facebook VP, Global Facilities and Real Estate, in a written statement. "Facebook will continue to invest in Menlo Park demonstrating our commitment to the area as an active and responsible community member.

According to news first published by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Facebook has submitted an application to the city of Menlo Park to complete tenant improvements on an eight-story, 206,869-square-foot office building under construction at the Independence Drive site.

The office is part of the Menlo Gateway development project of Bohannon Companies; the project includes the 11-story luxury hotel called Hotel Nia, a parking garage and a 40,000-square-foot fitness center. These structures which constitute the first phase of the development are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The second phase of the project will include two other eight-story office buildings totaling 500,000 square feet, at 101 and 155 Constitution Drive, and two more parking garages.

The Silicon Valley Business Journal also cited a source close to the deal saying Facebook is expected to be the tenant at two other eight-story office buildings scheduled for construction in the development's second phase.

David Bohannon II, CEO of the David D. Bohannon Organization, declined to comment.

See more here:
Facebook expected to lease eight-story Menlo Gateway office building - The Almanac Online

Photo: Leslie Plaza Johnson, Freelancer

Construction workers inspect safety equipment after having seen a demonstration on safety management at the MD Anderson construction site in League City.

Robert Cross, director of training at the Plumbers Local Union 68 in Houston, shows the textbooks for the union's five-year training curriculum.

Rosa Anguiano cuts copper pipe during class at the Plumbers Local Union 68.

Training coordinator Othon Guillen talks to a class of 1st year students at the Plumbers Local Union 68 Saturday April 22,2017.(Dave Rossman Photo)

Carlos Rodrigues of JBS Plumbing cuts a piece of copper pipe during class at the Plumbers Local Union 68 Saturday April 22,2017.(Dave Rossman Photo)

Student Carlos Rodriguez of JBS Plumbing brazes a copper pipe during class at the Plumbers Local Union 68 Saturday April 22,2017.(Dave Rossman Photo)

May 9, 2017: Construction worker tests out a dust management tool during a demonstration held at the MD Anderson construction site in League City, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

May 9, 2017: Construction workers inspect safety equipment after having seen a demonstration on safety management at the MD Anderson construction site in League City, Texas. (Leslie Plaza Johnson/Freelance)

Program building up construction workers' skills

Jaime Ramos worked picking ornamental ferns in Florida until he got ready to start a family. He took a higher-paying construction job, but then found himself frustrated by a transient labor force that learns as it goes.

"There are people who've been doing this for years and sometimes they don't know they're doing something the wrong way," he said recently. "Just nobody ever taught them."

Workers came and went. No one got benefits. There was barely opportunity for advancement. Ramos knew it was no place to build a future.

Then he got a call from a brother-in-law in Houston, who told him about one contractor, Marek Bros., that offered a training program and a real career path. So Ramos moved here and took advantage of Marek's classes. Six years later, he's a company foreman with a promising future in management.

Without training from Marek, Ramos said, "I'd be job-hopping like the other friends I have."

Jaime Ramos, a 30-year-old construction foreman, chose to come work at Marek Bros. because the company offered training in skills that have helped him advance.

Jaime Ramos, a 30-year-old construction foreman, chose to come work...

Ramos is both an exception in the modern construction industry and exactly the kind of worker that local employers are struggling to cultivate amid a generations-long downturn in the skill and availability of construction labor.

"I've yet to run across anybody who doesn't agree that the industry has a workforce problem," said Chuck Gremillion, executive director of the Houston-based Construction Career Collaborative, or C3, which since 2009 has worked with contractors and project owners to improve their employment standards.

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

While local community colleges Houston, San Jacinto and Lone Star help prepare students entering the trades, C3 tries to rally contractors to work with the existing labor pool and make the industry more attractive.

That's a tall task. C3 faces a complicated problem at the intersection of low wages, dangerous work, poor benefits, the scaling back of vocational courses in public schools and loss of craft training programs once offered by labor unions. Quickly fading are the days of career painters, bricklayers and drywall hangers.

RELATED:Construction workers dangerously low on benefits

C3 has taken aim at all of these factors, teaching safety protocol, enforcing good employment practices among its accredited contractors and focusing on craft training as part of a long-term solution.

"We've seen this decrease in the availability and the skill level of the workforce over many years," said Katrina Kersch, chief operations officer for the National Center for Construction Education and Research in Washington, D.C. "The lack of training is why we believe we're in a workforce shortage."

The problem is most acute in quickly growing regions with high labor demand, like Texas. Large segments of the construction workforce operate as independent subcontractors drifting from sector to sector without the benefits of full employment, usually learning the craft with no formal training.

Lack of training also harms the bottom line. Research from 2014 from the Construction Industry Institute at the University of Texas found that if 1 percent of project costs were invested in workforce training, productivity rises 11 percent, injuries fall by 26 percent and the amount of work that must be redone falls by 23 percent.

"If there's a limiting factor in Houston growing, it would be a skilled workforce," said Jim Stevenson, Houston division president for McCarthy Building Cos., a contractor accredited by C3.

C3, which hired its first three paid staffers in 2014, now is working to bring on a "craft training champion" by month's end to encourage and foster in-house training programs at contractors across the city. As Gremillion tells it, the training problem began with the decline in union membership beginning in the 1980s. The unions, he said, traditionally offered craft training.

Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said major employers' long-standing focus on lowering wages also contributed to the current situation.

RELATED:Texas builders fear fallout of immigration crackdown on workforce

C3 shares office space with the local branch of the Associated General Contractors of America, which Lichtenstein said generations ago encouraged the use of non-union labor. The industry, he said, is "complaining about something they helped create."

But unions aren't totally dead. Particularly for trades like electricians, HVAC techs or plumbers that require state licenses, union training programs remain robust.

At the Plumbers Local Union 68 in north central Houston, director of training Robert Cross spreads about three dozen textbooks across a conference room table - the material for the five-year program to become a certified journeyman plumber. Books range from basic safety to math to "Drawing Interpretation and Plan Reading."

Robert Cross, director of training at the Plumbers Local Union 68 in Houston, shows the textbooks for the union's five-year training curriculum.

Robert Cross, director of training at the Plumbers Local Union 68...

The union has 35 part-time instructors, 16 classrooms and computer labs with projector screens, and six shop areas stocked with pipe cutting and welding stations or mock-ups of hospital gas systems, refrigeration coils, an office tower mechanical closet and a bathroom plumbing system.

Local 68 has roughly 1,900 members, plus about 600 students who spend 246 classroom hours and 600 hours apprenticing for certified plumbers each year for five years. The program is funded through deductions from members' wages, which are $44.34 per hour under union negotiation.

"These programs take a lot of energy, a lot of effort," Cross said. "This is the type of school that C3 would like to see their contractors bring back for all their crafts."

Training coordinator Othon Guillen shows student Carlos Rodriguez how to braze copper pipe during class at the Plumbers Local Union 68 Saturday April 22,2017.(Dave Rossman Photo)

Training coordinator Othon Guillen shows student Carlos Rodriguez...

C3 has about 230 accredited contractors in Houston.

The companies have agreed to hire workers as hourly employees, not subcontractors; to pay overtime and offer compensation insurance; to provide federal safety certification; and to express an intention of building an in-house craft training program.

After hiring a training manager, C3 will assess each company's progress in developing their own programs.

Some have already launched. Ramos, for example, started at Marek as a helper hanging drywall, while also taking courses on materials and processes, codes and regulations, reading blueprints and the economics of budgeting. He eventually earned a certification to coach other students.

Marek started the training program about 10 years ago.

"The industry wasn't doing as well attracting people because they didn't see paths for growth," said Sabra Phillips, Marek's director of talent development. "We felt like we needed to do our part to contribute to solving this."

McCarthy is also opening a new office building east of Houston with a dedicated craft training facility for employees.

To encourage more such programs, C3 is developing a blueprint for other companies seeking to build such training programs.

Ryan Falterman of MSA, a construction safety training company, rewards a worker during a safety training program held at the MD Anderson construction site in League City.

Ryan Falterman of MSA, a construction safety training company,...

Major projects that have opted to use C3-accredited contractors include an expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston currently underway; a new pediatric tower for Texas Children's Hospital; and expansions for Memorial Hermann in the Texas Medical Center and for an MD Anderson Cancer Center in League City.

Peter Dawson, senior vice president of facility services at Texas Children's and a member of the C3 board, said accreditation like this reduces instances of "substandard construction quality."

"This is of long-term benefit to those who own and operate the facilities," he said.

Read more from the original source:
Program building up construction workers' skills - Houston Chronicle

Dive Brief:

Last year, Amazon permitted the Mary's Place shelter take up residence in a hotel it owned. That hotel will be demolished, according to Business Insider, in order to make way for two new Amazon buildings, one of which includes the new homeless shelter. The company said it will spend tens of millions of dollars on designing the new facility and will not charge the shelter rent. Mary's Place will pay its own staff costs.

Amazon has been dominating the Seattle commercial real estate market, with most of its activity in the South Lake Union part of town. By the close of 2016, Amazon had acquired a total of 8.5 million square feet across Seattle, and the company is expected to fill up to 12 million square feet by 2022. Last year alone, Amazon absorbed 69% of the 2.5 million square feet of downtown office space that came online.

Adding to the tech hub activityin Seattle are companies like Facebook and Google, who have established a presence in the South Lake Union area as well.Facebook is adding to its Seattle stock with the lease of two buildingsworth $246 million. Those should be finished with construction in the third quarter of 2018. Facebook already has a Seattle office that can accommodate 2,000 workers, but the new digs will allow the company to double that number.

Google also announced a Seattle expansion into four buildings. Google's portion will total 607,000 square feet, but the buildings will also feature ground-floor retail and residences on the upper floors.

In addition to direct employment and construction benefits, these tech hubs can also transform the surrounding community and spur the development of everything from new housing to transportation options. However, as The Times noted, they can also lead to gentrification a consequence that cities, and in Amazon's case, the company itself,aim to help counteract.

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Amazon's new Seattle office building to include space for a homeless shelter - Construction Dive

American Bureau of Shipping has pre-leased offices in CityPlace2 in Springwoods Village.

HFF arranges construction loan for Springwoods Village office building

HFF has lined up a construction loan for CityPlace 2, a 327,000-square-foot office building in CityPlace district of Springwoods Village.

A venture of Patrinely Group, USAA Real Estate Co. and CDC Houston is developing the 10-story building, which will be occupied by American Bureau of Shipping upon its completion in 2018. The building will have24,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.

HFF's Wally Reid, Cortney Cole and Trent Agnew arranged thefive-year, fixed-rate construction permanent loan through Galveston-based American National Insurance Co.

RELATED: Marriott CityPlace hotel coming to Springwoods Village

CityPlace 2 will be the first office building to be completed in the 60-acre CityPlace mixed-use development. Plans call for 4 million square feet of office space, 600 mid-rise apartment units, a 337-room Marriott CityPlace hotel, and more than 400,000 square feet of retail space.

Springwoods Village, near Interstate 45, the Grand Parkway and the Hardy Toll Road, is home to Exxon Mobil Corp., Southwestern Energy Co. and the future two-building campus of HP.

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HFF arranges construction loan for Springwoods Village office building - Chron.com

Under the plan to remake Tysons, the tallest buildingsup to 400 feetshould be located closest to the Silver Line stations.

Last week, theBoard of Supervisors approved changes to a future office building next to the Greensboro Metro station to raise its stature by 65 feet or up to 27 stories.

Located at the highest natural elevation in the county, this building will help to shape the look of the future skyline for Tysons.

The 400,000 square foot office is one of the six buildings that make up the Tysons Central development. Originally approved in 2013, the overall project will bring up to two million square feet of office, residential, retail hotel space next to the Greensboro station.

The boards action also allowed for other minor changes to the office, known as building A. It decreases the total amount of retail space previously approved by 35,000 square, converting this to office space instead.

The future building will be located on a 1.1-acre site north of Leesburg Pike, just steps away from the Greensboro stations escalators. Today, two retail buildings occupy the site, including a Mens Warehouse and Big Screen Store.

The building also includes construction of three of the six public parks planned for Tysons Central. The three parks includes a half-acre plaza that connects to the escalators for the Greensboro station, and more than quarter acre sky park.

The plaza will include seating, landscaping, bike racks, and public art. The elevated sky park, which will be located on the roof of the ground-floor retail, will connect to the plaza via a grand staircase. This staircase will be built so that it provides amphitheater style seating for performances or events on the plaza.

Developer Folger Pratt say they anticipate starting construction on the office building in 2018. It will join the Lumen, a 32-story, 398-unit apartment building, that broke ground last November on site next to the future office.

Rendering of the Lumen building in Tysons.

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First Office Building for Tysons Central Grows in Height - Fairfax County Government NewsCenter

For a 17-story, Class-A office building currently underway in Bostons Seaport District, builder-developer Skanska USA, along with Boston-based design firm CBTand a host of engineers, had to think outside of the box.

So, they looked to the ellipse.

The 400,000-square-foot building, which topped out in March, is shaped by an elliptical steel frame that bows out as it ascends, reducing lateral loads and allowing the interior to be relatively light on columns.

The project, 121 Seaport, is just one of several buildings to break ground in Bostons burgeoning Seaport District in the last few years. The development run was sent into overdrive by the 2004 addition of new convention center in the neighborhood, with more than 7.6 million square feet of residential and commercial space built or on the way. And thats just whats being developed as part of developer WSs Seaport Square master plan for the districts core.

That massive undertaking has spurred other development in the area, including GEs new $200 million headquarters, which broke ground there this week on the site of a former candy-making facility.

At 121 Seaport, the decision to use an elliptical frame came from two parallel charges. The first, according to Henry Celli, senior project architect at CBT, was Skanskas goal to build the most energy-efficient structure the team could manage (the project is vying for LEED Platinum certification). The second was less quantifiable and came from the architects, who wanted to break from the typical steel-and-glass rectangular buildings cropping up nearby.

"As we were analyzing the Seaport District it was our second project in the Seaport we were noticing how the existing zoning was forcing a lot of projects into a regularized form, and we wanted to distinguish ourselves from that form in some other way,"Celli said.

The view from 121 Seaport into downtown Boston

Hallie Busta

Zoning in the area encourages square or blocky construction that uses up most the site, Celli said, with a relatively low cap on project height due to the nearby Boston Logan International Airport. An added challenge was the MBTA Silver Line train that ran beneath one end of the site, making digging too close challenging and costly.

The design solution was two-fold. The heft of the building was angled on the site as much to mind the placement of the foundation relative to the subway tunnel as to offer a "strong gesture,"Celli said, toward the adjacent Seaport Square Green park, both part of the Seaport Square master plan.

The project team derived the elliptical shape from building models generated to determine what form factors would allow them to reduce the risk associated with building near a subway line, limit solar heat gain on the faade, reduce the wind loads and, more generally, deliver a fresh, yet modest, take on office building design in a neighborhood filled with boxes.

The elliptical shell offers expansive views of the Boston Harbor and Financial District from the interior which this reporter witnessed when visiting the site last week. Even with the interiors complete, 10-foot ceilings throughout the space and high-performance vision glass which accounts for 80% of the faade will largely maintain the sights.

Those high ceilings are possible in part because the project uses a chilled-beam mechanical system instead of typical HVAC, which Skanska first implemented at 101 Seaport a similarly sized office project next door and will use in 121, too. The system circulates water, instead of air, reducing energy consumption and lowering related costs. The project will also use a 40,000-gallon-tank rainwater reclamation and reuse system, which will cut water consumption throughout the project by 30%, Russ DeMartino, vice president of development for Skanska USA Commercial Development, told Construction Dive in an email.

"We used a lot of data to back up the design moves we were making,"Celli told journalists during a presentation at Skanskas Boston office last week. For example, for a 25,000-square-foot floor plate, CBTs design requires 10% less cladding when the ellipse form factor is used compared to the rectangular one. The design choice also cuts energy usage by 14% thanks to a lower solar-heat gain coefficient, and the lighter load requires 15% less rebar in the buildings core.

CBT

An "aggressive"construction timeline, according to DeMartino, required the team to consider alternative construction methods to speed up the build. The team settled on the still-uncommon "up/down"construction process to erect the structure. The approach, through which the substructure and the first part of the superstructure are built roughly in tandem, is particularly useful for large projects in urban areas where conventional foundation work can be challenging.

"If we designed each tower column foundation to support the entire 17 stories of building, each of them would have been 25 feet deeper and it would have increased the cost of the project by $6 million,"DeMartino said, noting that using the method shaved six months off the job as compared to a typical bottom-up build.

Heres how it worked: The project team designed a temporary foundation under each column that could support the dead load of the subterranean parking and the first six floors of the tower. A 7-foot-thick concrete slab was then constructed at the lowest level of excavation (three floors down) to connect with the building columns and spread the load of all 17 stories across the slab. From there, floors seven through 17 were constructed.

"Accordingly, the excavation crews were 'in a race'to install the bottom garage slab before the steel crews erected more than six floors of the tower,"DeMartino said. Having Skanska as developer and builder helped manage that process, he added.

A rendering of the completed project

Skanska

Even though the bulk of the building was angled to avoid it, the subway tunnel under part of the site presented a challenge to construction. Excavation walls can move between inches and a foot which normally isnt a problem, DeMartino said except when building near an underground structure as massive and complex as a subway.

The project team used Autodesks BIM 360 project collaboration software to manage workflow and a combined Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit model to develop a plan for the site that used the permanent parking floors underground to brace the perimeter walls, nearly eliminating lateral movement of 121 Seaports permanent slurry wall.

"Ironically, this method is also much faster than a conventional building construction method, saving many months of schedule,"DeMartino said.

BIM wasnt only used to facilitate design. It also helped keep the project on track. Paul Pedini, vice president of operations for Skanska USA Civil,told journalists during the presentation that the model was also used to manage the schedule and even to see if equipment necessary for construction would fit where it needed to on-site. "[There are] so many uses for the model once you get it,"he said.

In addition to the buildings atypical orientation and flared shell, the ground plan was also a critical environmental design factor, in this case by making the area more accessible to pedestrians. The projects three-story podium is separated from the tower and largely fills the site. Its rounded edges match the form of the rising, rounded corona, while the buildings entry is pulled back from the street corner. A 70-foot-wide outdoor pedestrian promenade on the third level of the podium provides space for retail and greenery and visually separates the base from the tower.

A rendering of 121 Seaport shows the receded entrance

Skanska

For a part of the city that was once a place for visitors to drop their cars on the way into downtown, supporting the uptick in commercial and residential development with greenery and public space is important. "Ten or 20 years ago, [the area] was mostly parking lots,"Celli said. "Essentially, where our building is it was a sea of parking lots. Most people would drive in, park in that area, then walk into downtown."

A view across the 17th floor

Hallie Busta

Looking out from the top of 121 on our tour, it was hard to imagine the sea of parking lots Celli mentions. Next door is 101 Seaport, also by Skanska and home to its Boston offices, and its other completed nearby project, Watermark Seaport Apartments, is also visible. For now, the view from the top of 121 is uninhibited, with wind whipping through the wall-less shell and the curve of the floor plate more apparent from the incomplete interior then it is likely to be for its eventual tenants. During our visit, crews were already working their way up to install the glass curtainwall, apply fire-proofing and begin to prepare the building for tenants.

Working on 121 Seaport with Skanska and CBT was McNamara Salvia as the structure engineers; Haley and Aldrich as the geotechnical engineers; Bala | TMP as the MEP engineers; Nitsch Engineering for the civil work; and Vidaris as faade consultant.

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At Boston's 121 Seaport, Skanska plays with process, form for office construction - Construction Dive

GREENCASTLE, Pa. Summit Health is planning to build a medical office building in the Greencastle-Antrim community.

Construction could begin as soon as this summer in Antrim Township, Pa.

John Massimilla, chief operating officer of Chambersburg (Pa.) Hospital, confirmed this week that plans for the Summit-owned site at Exit 3 of Interstate 81 have changed since the project was proposed in spring 2015.

Originally, we planned to place an urgent care at the location, he said. We decided we wanted to plan a facility similar to the Waynesboro (Pa.) Medical Office Building in Greencastle because it is important to us that we provide convenient, accessible health care options to residents of Greencastle and northern Washington County.

The Waynesboro Medical Office Building opened in April 2015 adjacent to Waynesboro Hospital on East Main Street. The $15 million, three-story facility took about a year to construct.

The building houses Summit Health services for breast care, cancer and hematology, cardiology, endocrinology, ENT and hearing, orthopedic, podiatry, urology, women's health, surgical, primary care and walk-in.

It is planned that the (Greencastle) building will be about the same size as the Waynesboro Medical Office Building, Massimilla said.

He said Summit Health has not decided what services will be offered at the Greencastle location.

Summit Health houses a number of services at the John L. Grove Medical Center on the east side of Greencastle. Those services include primary care, walk-in, imaging, lab and women's health.

Plans for specific services located at the new facility have not been decided, Massimilla said when asked if any of those services would be moved to the new facility.

The Antrim Township Board of Supervisors gave approval Tuesday for Summit Health to begin moving dirt at the site while the plan is going through the review process.

The area of the new medical office building, known as the Antrim Commons Business Park, is a busy one.

In addition to several warehouses being built, the new location for Blaise Alexander Chevrolet Volvo is under construction, and El Dorado Stone is building a new production facility.

Summit Health hopes to begin construction by late summer or fall, Massimilla said.