A Complicated Complex

High-Profile Mixed-Use Project Begins Opening

By Bea Quirk

The $300 million EpiCentre complex, one of Charlotte’s highest-profile developments, is finally starting to come alive.

The mixed-use project features a little of everything: a 53-story condominium tower and 10-story hotel sitting atop a five-story, 267,000-sq-ft entertainment center that also includes some office space. And there’s an underground four-level parking garage.

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The 1,200-space parking garage opened in December, and the restaurants and shops started opening in January. They include Moe’s Southwestern Grille; Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar; Howl at the Moon (a dueling piano bar); and Whiskey River, a country/rock bar owned by NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

At the same time, two different contractors are building the $180 million, 410-unit 210 Trade condo tower and the $14 million, 175-room Aloft Hotel on top of the partiers.

Further adding to the complexity of the overall project is that each component has a different developer, architect and contractor. The Ghazi Co., based in Charlotte, is the master developer of the overall project and owner of the garage and entertainment complex, which was designed by DMR Architecture of Charlotte and built by St. Louis-based Clayco Inc.

Building-by-Building

Located in Charlotte’s Uptown area, at the 3.25-acre site of the old Charlotte Convention Center (which closed in 1994), the multifaceted EpiCentre is being developed by Afshin Ghazi, the 30-something, up-and-coming owner of the Ghazi Co., which bought the old convention center site in 2004 for $14.5 million and imploded the structure later that year.

Excavation work began in late 2005. Soon thereafter, it was discovered that Ghazi’s new development was sitting on a gold mine when an old mine shaft was found.

The various components are literally stacked on each other. Clayco excavated 60 ft below grade for the parking garage, which covers the entire site and serves as the foundation for the complex, says Ray Kramp, Clayco vice president.

The garage sits on concrete spread footings founded on hard granite, and each column in every structure has its own footing. Geotechnical engineers determined the allowable bearing capacity, “and then we calculated the load above it and sized each footing,” says Cody Campbell, project manager for Dallas-based Brockette/Davis/Drake, which served as the structural engineer.

The condo tower, in fact, sits on one mat foundation that covers the entire tower footprint. Pouring the concrete for it took 20 hours.

The garage was topped out in July 2006, and then Clayco began building the entertainment complex, which has three connected buildings. This part of the project was completed in spring 2007, when Atlanta-based Fulcrum Construction began the interior build-out.

Late last summer, crews arrived to begin construction of the condo tower and hotel.

“Having three different owners and three different contractors certainly makes it challenging,” Kramp says. “It’s been a technical process and chaotic at times with 300-400 workers on the site and not much laydown space.” Onsite managers and crews communicate daily, and larger logistical and legal issues are handled at the owner level.

The 210 Trade condo tower is a project of Indianapolis-based Flaherty & Collins Properties. It was designed by Gromatzky Dupree & Associates of Dallas, and the general contractor is RJ Griffin & Co. of Charlotte.

At 678 ft, the tower will be one of the tallest structures in Charlotte. Construction began in August and is set for completion in fall 2009.

Winter Construction started its work on the Aloft Hotel in September and expects to open it as early as this fall. The hotel is being developed by Noble Investment Group of Atlanta. The architect is Fruchtman Associates Architects of Atlanta. Aloft is a new concept within the W Hotel line of Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

To accommodate the separate construction crews, the hotel and condo tower projects share a staging area located on a transfer slab on top of the entertainment complex and are separated by a masonry wall. The slab transfers the building’s loads, but also serves as a demarcation point where Ghazi’s ownership ends and the air rights he sold to the other two developers begin. Its thickness ranges from 10 in. to 4 ft.

The Logistics

Although the EpiCentre complex has multiple components and owners and builders, the engineers had to focus on the big picture.

“From a design perspective, we have treated this as one project,” Brockette/Davis/Drake’s Campbell says. “To have multiple owners, architects and contractors for one building is very unusual.”

Clayco’s Kramp adds, “There was a lot of pressure on each owner, architect and builder to stay on schedule and meet deadlines for their parts of the project.”

Because the site is in a heavily traveled part of uptown’s grid road system, concrete pours are done at night, and there is a lot of evening and weekend work. Deliveries have to be highly coordinated, and they are scheduled only after or before rush hours.

“It’s a difficult, high-risk project,” says Chris Geganto, Winter’s project manager. “The bottom of the hotel is already 50 ft up, so we’re starting at a point that usually takes us months to reach. There needs to be a lot of awareness of safety factors.”

Safety managers are onsite at all times. Tower cranes for the hotel and condo tower swing pass each other, so they must be carefully coordinated. The site also abuts a light rail stop on Charlotte’s new Lynx line, and cranes cannot swing over it.

The buildings also use three different structural systems. Parts of the retail complex are of steel frame construction with composite steel and concrete floors. The garage, the lower levels of the entertainment center and the condo tower feature cast-in-place concrete. The hotel uses a Diversakore structural system featuring concrete columns with U-shaped steel beams.

The condo tower uses large columns and sheer walls to support vertical, wind and earthquake loads. The concrete used has a strength of up to 10,000 psi, the columns are as large as 54 by 54 in., and the sheer walls are 24 in. thick at their base.

Campbell and his team often found themselves in the role of facilitators.

“What any player did in its piece affects everyone else’s piece,” he explains. “If you only have one contractor, it knows what it has done in each step. But we had three. So a lot more documentation was needed to show what each contractor did, and it was verified in the field, too. Any differences between the construction documents and what was actually done were subject to discussions and negotiations.”

With the entertainment space being occupied, security efforts are in place to keep tenants and their visitors out of the construction areas. Geganto says that at the same time, Ghazi is prohibiting construction workers from the finished area. “It’s a dilemma how do we get workers to our site?” he adds. “We’re using a network of stair towers.”

Despite the obstacles, Genanto says the project is providing an excellent way for his firm to gain visibility in the Charlotte market. “This is an opportunity for us to re-establish ourselves in Charlotte and to prove to developers that we can build a complex project in complex circumstances,” he adds.