Elkins Excels

Contractor Busy on Prominent Area Projects

by Natalie Keith

With more than a half dozen projects either completed or under construction, Jacksonville-based Elkins Constructors has had its hands full in its hometown over the past few years.

Two of the area's highest-profile projects are being at least partly handled by Elkins, one of Jacksonville's largest general contractors. The company is involved with building the new $95 million Jacksonville Main Library in a joint venture with local companies such as The Auchter Co., Lodestar and Paris and is also building a new $20 million corporate headquarters for Ring Power, one of the nation's largest Caterpillar dealers.

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Other Jacksonville projects in which Elkins has been involved include a beverage laboratory and pilot plant for Bacardi Rum/Castleton Beverage; a 55,000-sq.-ft. facility for Jacksonville University's Davis College of Business that will open this year; two new buildings for the Betty P. Cook Nassau Center of Florida Community College; a three-building campus for Butler Plaza; and a 125,000-sq.-ft. call center for America Online.

New Main Library

The construction team is expecting to complete the library project by April, said Matt Welch, executive vice president of Elkins and project executive for the job.

The new library is a 300,000-sq.-ft., five-story building with a main entrance and a court-level entrance. The court level features a 400-seat auditorium, 5,000-sq.-ft., multipurpose meeting room, catering kitchen and prefunction gallery. The first floor features a café and bookstore, the popular library collection with bestsellers and a teen area with a cyber café, music stations and extensive book collection.

The architect of the project is Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York.

"Working with an out-of-town architect has been a challenge," Welch said, who said the distance poses challenges in terms of communication.

The children's area, with a nature theme, is the focus of the second floor and includes a craft room and an indoor theater that looks like a screened porch. The area will open to an outdoor courtyard with a reflecting pool.

The third floor will house the library's collection of nonfiction books. With a 42-ft.-tall ceiling, the grand reading room will be the focus of the fourth floor and will contain specialty collections, including African-American, genealogy and Florida studies.

The library will incorporate state-of-the-art technology, including 250 public computers, a wireless Internet zone, satellite and video conferencing capabilities, and the infrastructure to support future technologies.

"It's going to be a pretty building when it's finished," Welch said.

In November, the project team was completing the precast concrete and masonry work and was expecting to begin work on the interior finishes. There will be about 25 subcontractors working on the interior portions of the library, Welch said.

"It's been a work in progress," he added. "There have been a lot of changes along the way."

The project team had originally set a deadline to complete the library in time for February's Super Bowl in Jacksonville. However, the project suffered delays partly because of the hurricanes that hit Florida last fall.

"September was a real challenge," Welch said. "We spent two days preparing for a hurricane and then another two days cleaning up after it."

Another challenge has been keeping the project within budget given the number of changes and the fact that it is publicly financed, he said.

Ring Power HQ

Elkins is also building the 400,000-sq.-ft. Ring Power Corp. headquarters at World Commerce Center in north central St. Johns County. Steinemann & Co. of Jacksonville is the developer of the 1,000-acre property.

With more than 800 employees, Ring Power decided to consolidate operations and some employees in the World Commerce Center location.

Elkins was awarded the project in September 2003 and began construction the next month.

"We're the general contractors on the project but we're kind of acting like a construction manager because we're working with one of the owners of the project," said project manager Al Howard.

Elkins expected to complete the project in December 2004.

"Because of the fast-track nature of this project we've been working a lot of overtime," Howard said.

He said the project consists of five different buildings. The first is a four-story, 88,000-sq.-ft. administrative building constructed of structural steel and precast concrete. The building is a Class A office building with many high-end finishes, such as terrazzo floors, stone and elaborate millwork.

The second is a two-story, 200,000-sq.-ft. multiuse building with training and maintenance facilities. The building will contain truck repair shops and service bays and will provide for other industrial uses. The third building is a single-story, 72,000-sq.-ft. service building; the fourth is an 8,000-sq.-ft. pre-engineered metal building; and the fifth is a 12,000-sq.-ft. paint and sandblast building.

The five buildings took a large amount of tilt-wall construction, which is "a more labor-intensive process," Howard said.

Another challenge was the 300,000 sq. ft. of concrete paving required for the project site. Elkins performed the paving work itself rather than hire a subcontractor.

During the project, the owners had made 300 changes, which made the job more difficult," Howard said.