Monster Parking Garage

Contractors Joint Venture to Build Unique $182 Million Car-Rental Facility

The joint venture of James A. Cummings Inc. and Centex Rooney Construction Co. literally had to write its own addition to Florida's Building Code when it started building the $182 million Consolidated Rental Car Facility at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The massive concrete structure is thought to be the only structure of its kind in the country.

By Scott Judy

Upon first glance, the Consolidated Rental Car Facility that the joint venture of James A. Cummings Inc. and Centex Rooney Construction Co. is building at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport looks like an overgrown version of the parking garage sitting next to it.

It looks like a parking deck, and yes it holds cars, but the nine-story CRCF is a lot bigger than most. At roughly 4.3 million sq.-ft. - equal to roughly 76 football fields - it could accommodate an estimated 9,000 parking spaces.

It's oversized in scope, function and complexity, too. Think of it as a parking garage on steroids.

Its extra don't include just some retail on the ground floor, either. Instead, the CRCF's complexity comes mostly from its first-floor function as a quick-turnaround (QTA) facility for processing rental cars, including fueling, washing, some maintenance and otherwise sprucing up.

Sixty-three gas dispensers and 126 nozzles - all of which necessitated a unique foam-deluge system for fire purposes - are located on the first floor, along with a car wash. It will also include approximately 150,000 sq. ft. of retail operations and supporting offices for car-rental firms using FLL, all contained within a high-end lobby entrance evocative of a hospitality facility.

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Notably, all of this will be consolidated under one roof, making the CRCF one of the very few - if not the only - facilities of its kind in the nation.

"We believe we're the only truly consolidated rental-car facility in the country," said Todd McClendon, senior project manager for URS of Fort Lauderdale, the program manager overseeing FLL's expansion. He added that a similar project at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport will actually have its quick-turnaround operations taking place outside, on a large parking lot-type area.

"If we were just building a parking deck, we wouldn't have nearly the challenges that we have," he added. "It creates a whole bunch of special requirements."

Concrete Challenge
The joint venture of Fort Lauderdale-based Cummings and Centex Rooney of Plantation is a follow-up act to the Hibiscus Parking Garage project, located next door to the current project.

The two firms teamed to build that project several years ago, completing it ahead of schedule and sufficiently under budget to not only add amenities but also return an estimated $1.4 million to the owner, the Broward County Aviation Department.
Leading the construction this time are two vets from that past project, Geoff Bunnell, senior vice president with Cummings (the lead firm), and Rob Gillette, senior project manager for Centex-Rooney.

Bunnell reiterated the huge difference between this project and the previous one.

"This one is much more than a garage," he said. "A lot of people are saying, 'Well, it's just a parking deck. If you're topped out, you're done.' That's not the case. For example, the drywall and stucco contract on this job is as big as it would be on a $35 million high school. There's $4 million worth of HVAC on this project - the garage next door's (HVAC work totaled) $200,000. The plumbing system on this one is $3 million, and the fire-protection system is $2 million.

"You don't see it because it's so big, but there's a lot of work."
The sheer size of the project could be witnessed from the beginning. H.J. Foundation of Miami started on the first of 2,774 auger-cast piles on Nov. 1, 2002. It concluded its work about 31 mi. later.

By late December 2002, the project team was pouring its first column, and the first elevated deck pour took place Feb. 5, 2003. It would be the first of nearly 12 months straight of concrete work, not ending until Jan. 19, when the project topped out, some 138,336 yds. of concrete later.

The team hoped to pour at a rate of 80,000 sq. ft. per week, but actually achieved a rate of 100,000 sq. ft. per week for a significant stretch. It peaked at 122,000 sq. ft. in one week.

Rinker Materials supplied the concrete with an average of about 56 truckloads every day between February 2003 and January. Even so, the project's proximity to FLL's passenger entrance - and the tight site conditions - meant the contractors were limited in how many trucks could access the site.

"We'd only have six to eight trucks on site," said Gillette. "We were lucky. Rinker's facilities are less than 2 mi. away from here. They delivered a truck every six minutes."

During the summer months, pours started as early as 4 a.m., and later moved to 5:30. The concrete contractor is a joint venture between Form Works and Baker Concrete. D.L. Kirby was subcontracted by Form Works/Baker to supply, place and finish all of the concrete. Kirby subcontracted the concrete finishing to J & M Contractors. TCOE Corp. furnished and installed all of the rebar and post-tensioning.

The second-floor slab, which separates the quick-turnaround area from the rest of the facility, was built to provide a four-hour separation in case of a fire. To accomplish this, it has additional structural steel reinforcing, higher-strength concrete and was specified as a wet cure, with moisture blankets.

Rewriting the Code
The CRCF's unique nature created design and planning complexities. For example, the project didn't fit neatly into any of the building types included within the newly revised Florida Building Code.

"We've had to apply the intent of the code to this building," McClendon said. "We've got 126 fuel nozzles, a foam-deluge system and multiple occupancies in one building. So we've got a number of code issues that normally don't apply to a parking garage. In some cases we've had to literally write the code."

He added that the decisions made for this project may eventually become the state standard for this type of facility, with some potential for adoption as a national model.

Spillis Candela DMJM of Coral Gables served as both architect and engineer for the project.

The decisions for the FLL project mainly related to the CRCF's first-floor area and the multiple utilities and fire-related issues there. Installation of the various items required for this area didn't begin in full until the structural concrete work had reached the fourth floor.

"We weren't able to put in the underground utilities until after the structure was up," Gillette said. "That enabled us to work installing utilities with a lid over our head. Those subs - which were Fisk Electric, Nagelbush Mechanical, the Poole & Kent Co. and Phoenix Products - had a tremendous job to do with working with the structure overhead, with all of the columns up. Compared to how it's normally done, it was a tremendous task."

This first floor required a 19-ft. floor-to-floor height and a 16-ft. clearance at the fire lanes to accommodate any fire trucks that might need to access the facility.

Six 25,000-gallon fuel tanks are exterior to the facility. Fueling lines run from these underground tanks to the dispensers within the building.

Also to the exterior of the building, five 40,000-gallon tanks measuring approximately 73 ft. long and 10 ft. in diameter are being installed to gather the material released through the facility's foam-deluge system.

This system is tied in with other safety characteristics built into the building, such as a system of five ventilation shafts - with each shaft having nine fans - that together comprise a four-hour shaft that runs up from the first floor to the roof, through the middle of the structure. These nine fans would only begin running once the foam system was initiated, and the rest of the building's ventilation system was shut down.

In late February, the project team was just finalizing the first floor's utility and concrete slab work.

Much Remains
Bunnell said that even though the structure is topped out, much remains. Design of the tenant finishes for the 10 or so rental firms that will be using the facility is still progressing, with Spillis Candela coordinating with the various companies.

Cummings/Centex-Rooney will build the shell for these tenants, though each firm is expected to hire its own contractors for tenant build-out.

Utility work outside the building's footprint has been a "dance" from the beginning, and remains a focus of activity, said McClendon.

"We are building an elevated busway right over the utility corridor, so we have been dancing around force mains and 84-in. storm drains since we started this project," he said.

The project's overall completion date is December 2005, though an earlier milestone looms this year.

"The critical completion date to the airport - and the critical, most difficult one for us - is the lower four floors have to be complete by Dec. 28, " Bunnell said. "Once we achieve this the final completion will be a slam dunk."

Project Team:

Owner: Broward County Aviation Department
Program Manager: URS, Fort Lauderdale
Construction Manager: Cummings/Centex-Rooney, a joint venture between James A. Cummings Inc., Fort Lauderdale, and Centex-Rooney Construction Co., Plantation, Fla.
Architect/Engineer: Spillis Candela DMJM, Coral Gables, Fla.