Project Team
Owner: Wannado Entertainment
Location: Sunrise, Fla.
Cost: $24.6 million
Contractor: Centex Rooney Construction Co., Plantation, Fla.
Architect: Morris Architects, Orlando

The Wannado City project is a first-in-the nation development incorporating aspects of retail development, a highly themed amusement destination, educational activities and secure day-care functions.

With a slogan of "Where kids do what they Wannado," Wannado City is geared toward children in the 4-11 age range, allowing them to playfully investigate 250 career possibilities - in other words, "play grown-up." The approximately 140,000-sq.-ft. Wannado City facility was located at Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, Fla.

The facility features a wide variety of activity areas, with kid-sized grocery store, emergency/operating room, archeological site, diner, fire station, theater, hospital nursery, Internet café and many others.

There were approximately 60 of these highly themed areas, each requiring their own unique building facades and interior finishes. Also, design changes occurred during construction as the owner secured corporate sponsorships for some of the venues.

Each venue's framing was completed using the design-build delivery system in which structural components were modified to meet the requirements of each particular façade type and associated features.

Also, since the project was built to a child's scale, sizes were customized and shrunk to accommodate children, while still maintaining proper life safety egress requirements and ADA compliance. Another challenge was the schedule. Centex Rooney took over the project from another contractor six months into the job.

The project also included the installation of a 56-ft.-long section of an old DC-9 airplane. The plane's integration into the Wannado City airport required unconventional rigging methods, and numerous consultants and specialists worked to see that the plane was properly secured via two engineered steel columns that suspend the fuselage 8 ft. in the air.

Appropriately, safety was given significant attention. According to the contractor, there were approximately 283,512 manhours expended on the project, with no fatalities and a 0.0 incident rate for Centex Rooney.