Raleigh Convention Center

Largest Public Project in City’s History Opened to Public Recently

By Debra Wood

The $222 million Raleigh Convention Center opened in September and has booked several groups to fill its exhibit and ballroom space.

“This was the largest project the city of Raleigh has ever done,” says Walter Benoit, project executive with Skanska USA Building of Raleigh, which with joint venture partner Barnhill Contracting Co. of Raleigh managed the project.

The city and county anticipate the convention center will pump nearly $500 million into the economy and create nearly 2,000 jobs during its first five years of operation. The first group to meet at the new facility, the National Agents Alliance National Leadership Conference, began on September 11 and was expected to bring at least 1,800 people to Raleigh for four days. Seventeen other organizations have booked space in the center for the fall.

Construction on the 507,000-sq-ft, three-level convention center began in November 2005. The joint venture construction manager-at-risk team purchased the steel and concrete before the design was complete to expedite obtaining the materials and avoid steep price increases.

“The job started when prices started skyrocketing,” says John Muter, vice president of Barnhill’s building division. “We were able to work closely with the owner, which is the City Council and [Wake] County Commission, to develop a strategy for accelerating the design and bidding of the steel package.”

That strategy saved the project about $3 million, Muter says.

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Early purchases were just part of Skanska Barnhill’s cost-saving plan. Muter estimates the team trimmed $30 million by bidding in phases—putting out the demolition, shoring and retaining wall, and excavation packages before the final design was complete. He estimates the joint venture saved an additional $30 million in value-engineering recommendations.

Designed to fit the city

Three architectural firms sought public suggestions and collaborated on the design: O’Brien/Atkins Associates of Durham, N.C.; Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates of Atlanta; and Clearscapes of Raleigh.

“The project was part of a larger city vision for injecting energy back into the downtown of Raleigh,” says Scott Sickeler, a principal with Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback. “A convention center by definition is a large and massive building. It has to be to accomplish its mission, but the magnitude and scale can overwhelm the thing it has come to energize.”

The center takes up two blocks. The architectural team sought to ensure it would fit in with the city’s pedestrian-friendly goals. Designers placed the exhibit hall and 17 loading docks below ground. Muter estimates sinking the building added $12 million to the project but accomplished the design goal of the center not towering over the city. It also removes the loading dock from public view.

“Maintaining the urban context was one major component, and another was we wanted the city to view this as its living room,” says Dudley Lacy, president of O’Brien/Atkins, architect of record. “We went to great efforts to make the perimeter of the building as transparent as we could, with low-reflective glass and also tilting the glass so it didn’t reflect the sky.”

People walking by can see the activity in the convention center. A coffee shop sits out front. Every side boasts a grand entry to the building and a canopy. The ballroom and meeting rooms are located on the upper levels.

Public art was part of the building’s plan and was integrated in the design. Working from Raleigh’s nickname as the “City of Oaks,” artist Ned Kahn of Sebastopol, Calif., crafted a 211- by 44-ft “shimmer wall” that features an image of an oak tree. The wall, covering the exterior of the western face of the building, contains 79,464 pieces of aluminum, each 4 by 4 in., hinged on louvers. The panels wave in the wind.

“When the wind hits it and the sun is on the wall, it almost looks like the wind is passing through the tree,” says Steve Schuster, a principal with Clearscapes. “It has turned out to be more interesting than we hoped.”

CREE of Durham, a manufacturer of semiconductors and light-emitting diodes, donated $1 million for creation of the shimmer wall to serve as a signature symbol for the city. LED lights will illuminate the wall at night.

The shimmer wall not only fulfills an artistic mission, it also allows the building to breathe. The chillers and boilers, which require air flow, are placed behind the wall, and their operation ensures that the wall remains in motion.

The project team is seeking LEED certification. Green elements include use of low-volatile organic compound paints and adhesives, high-efficiency chillers and furnaces and water-conserving plumbing fixtures.

Also, Skanska Barnhill recycled approximately 85% of the construction rubbish, including 198 tons of debris from the demolition of four buildings that were on the site. The company pumped water from the dewatering process into sediment ponds for reuse in caisson-drilling operations, truck tire washdowns and dust control. It reused about 55,000 gallons of water each day, saving an estimated 4.8 million gallons from the sewer system.

Convention center construction

The structural-steel frame convention center sits 30 ft to 40 ft below grade.

During excavation, crews removed 325,000 cu yds of soil, or about 40,000 truckloads. The city repurposed the majority of that dirt into soccer fields at a public park.

Crews employed different retaining-wall systems on the various sides of the building. On the east, the team used a temporary H-pile and a wood lagging system, eventually removed as the adjacent hotel was constructed. On the south and west, tiebacks sprayed with gunite were used.

A secant wall system, a cantilevered retaining wall made up of 140 interlocked 5-ft-diameter, 70-ft-deep caissons, holds back soil from the parking garage adjacent to the loading dock on the north side.

“You take the caissons and drill down one, not put any rebar in it, skip one, drill down the next one,” Benoit says. “Then you drill between the two, like a half moon into each of them, so they lock together.”

The loading dock sits beneath three public streets, requiring construction of concrete and steel bridges to carry the street traffic.

The building consumed 8,600 tons of steel and 26,000 cu yds of concrete.

The center features several upscale and unique finishes, such as limestone on the exterior walls at the main entrance and granite around the building’s base and on the floors. Glass-fiber-reinforced gypsum prefabricated panels with triangular shapes to represent fibers were used to give a three-dimensional appearance to the ballroom ceiling. They were designed to evoke a sense of fabric, a tribute to the state’s textile industry.

Custom prestressed-concrete spun pole columns taper. Imbeds receive the curtain-wall bracing to carry the lateral loads from the 10-degree sloped curtain wall at the entrance. Architect Sickeler says it is the first time the prefabricated columns have been used in this manner in the United States.

Muter says 90% of the subcontractors who worked on the project are based in North Carolina and 70% of them are from Wake or surrounding counties.

“We had more than 2 million working hours on that project with only one minor lost-time accident,” Muter says.

Useful sources:

Raleigh Convention Center
http://www.raleighconvention.com/

Raleigh Convention Center Project Team:

Owner: City of Raleigh and Wake County
Construction Manager: A joint venture between Skanska USA Building and Barnhill Contracting, both of Raleigh
Architects: O’Brien/Atkins, Durham, N.C.; Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, Atlanta; and Clearscapes, Raleigh
Demolition: D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co., Raleigh
Caissons: Coastal Caisson Corp., Odessa, Fla.
Concrete: Crowder Construction Co. of Charlotte, N.C., and IQ Contracting, Raleigh
Steel Erection: Buckner Companies, Graham, N.C.
Plumbing: ABL & Associates Plumbing, Raleigh
Electrical: Bryant-Durham Electric Co., Durham
Mechanical: Comfort Engineers, Durham
HVAC: Newcomb and Co., Raleigh