Project Team
Owner: Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church
Location: Lecanto, Fla.
Cost: $6 million
Contractor: Elkins Constructors, Jacksonville
Engineer: McVeigh & Mangum Engineering, Jacksonville

This project presented a number of challenges for the engineering design team, including a requirement for the tallest concrete tilt-up panel ever erected.

The main feature of the design focused on the entryway, which included a sleek cross at the top of the main panel, resulting in the design of a 93-ft.-tall panel that weighed 208,000 lbs. The building also included a second panel 1 ft. shorter and many panels exceeding 50 ft.

The use of concrete tilt-up panels was a cost-effective design element. Also notably, architectural reveals are used on both sides of the panels. KBJ Architects of Jacksonville designed the 37,000-sq.-ft. structure with decorative interior as well as exterior tilt-up walls.

"It looks like the Cathedral of Notre Dame made out of tilt panels in the middle of nowhere in Citrus County," said J. Robert Crowe, project director for Elkins Constructors, the project's general contractor. "It is so tall, so massive and so out of character from everything around it. It draws your eyes."

While the structure resembles an old-time cathedral, its heights, shapes and decorative features were completed without the expense of cut stone. There are more than 10 mi. of architectural reveals in the tilt-up panels. All of the reveals required hand troweling.

The interior tilt walls, once rubbed out and painted, became the finished surface. Standing all 140 panels lasted about a month.

The main sanctuary tilt-up panels needed to be designed to minimize panel movement after construction for in-place design loads. This was accomplished by thickening the panels at the panel legs.

Design intricacies such as a curved radius and Gothic windows added to construction challenges.

Construction of the sanctuary generated so much excitement that church officials at one point brought in bleachers and served hot dogs and soft drinks so people could watch.

"It was like being at the fair," Crowe said. "There must have been 200 people just watching. They were that intrigued by the process and excited about the new building."